It’s a perennial question for legislators and school boards: how should we fund public education?

Behind that question lies another set of important questions that we find much harder to answer, like these:

  • What is education’s purpose?
  • How should it proceed?
  • Whom does it serve?

As a college student preparing to become a public school teacher I wound up taking a lot of classes that I didn’t know much about when I was in high school. These were classes in educational philosophy, pedagogical practice, and policy.

The classes in educational philosophy were the most interesting. The classes in pedagogical practice were a mixed bag. (Ironically, some of the worst teachers I have ever had were those who taught pedagogy.)

The classes in policy were the ones that helped me decide not to become a public school teacher; it was there that I saw that the work of teachers is molded by educational and political philosophies that can shift with each election.

I was drawn to education because I’d had so many good teachers, teachers who were plainly motivated by a love of learning, a love of their discipline, and care for their students.

Teaching is, for many of us who teach, first and foremost a work of love. It’s why so many of us accept a job that is so challenging and that pays so poorly.

Unfortunately, our work—especially when it is funded by acts of legislation—is subject to the whims of legislators.

Some of that is reasonable, but it also means that classroom practice can be changed significantly by people who don’t teach.

This is probably why I found the courses in educational philosophy to be most interesting. It was there that we discussed the big ideas in our community that shaped educational policy. Those courses were about what education is and who it serves.

Most of us when we are in school don’t ask questions about whether education is being done correctly. We simply don’t have enough information to work with.

In our educational philosophy classes we broadly considered at least three possible primary aims of education:

  1. Does education primarily serve the individual and the nurturing of their unique talents and aspirations?
  2. Does it primarily serve the civic interests of the community and the state by developing a citizenry with common goals and ideals? Or
  3. Does it primarily serve the economy, teaching young people the skills they will need to earn a living, and to serve the needs of the community’s prominent industries?

Obviously these ends are not mutually exclusive, but budgeting and policy making will always wind up giving preference to one of these or to some competing aim. And even these three can and will be influenced by other factors.

For example, if education aims to help the individual flourish, who decides what is meant by flourishing? Does flourishing look the same for everyone, or does each person have unique talents that need to be cultivated? Does the student decide what their talents are, or do their parents or teachers discern them? Are there certain virtues or qualities that all people should have? If so, how do we measure the success of an educational plan in fostering those virtues? If not, what do we do with students who have competing and incompatible virtues in the same classroom?

This is my morning reflection that is prompted in part by reading the news. Thoreau urges us not to read the Times but the Eternities, so I’ll end this morning reflection by returning to the eternal:

Before reading the news, I begin my day with simple prayer. It’s a way of acknowledging before the cosmos that I am not as wise or as good as I would like to be, and of resolving to do what I can to remedy that today.

Similarly, before I begin a semester I pray for my students. This takes on a number of forms, but one of the simple ones is this: before the semester begins, I go to the classrooms where I will teach and I walk around the room, imagining the students who will sit in each chair, and wondering what they will need from me. I let my hand rest on each chair or table for a moment and ask for good things for the student who will sit there.

I don’t know what this does for the students or the chairs, but I know it focuses me, and it reminds me that whatever the policymakers decide, the work of teaching will always be for me a work of love.