Corey Parks
According to Neil Postman, author of The End of Education, cultures and schools must
serve particular gods in order to survive. He gives countless examples of these gods in his book,
and argues to justify all of them. While his philosophy is strong, it might be a little too
polytheistic, if you will. My teaching philosophy posits that there are only three gods which I
need to serve in order to be a successful teacher: Knowledge, Self, and Community.
First and foremost, I have a responsibility to serve the god of Knowledge. Let us not
think of Knowledge in Bloom’s terms (the first step in his taxonomy) but rather as an over-
arching concept that encompasses his entire ideology. It’s quite obvious that as a teacher, I must
teach, but I must do much more than simply transfer facts in order to serve the god of
Knowledge. I will have truly appeased this god when my students not only know things, but can
apply them to their own lives. I refuse to have my students read a book simply to answer
selected-response questions about it. They will have to pull the main themes from stories and
create their own meaning by connecting those themes to their own lives, and they’ll be able to do
it all on their own.
The second god I must serve is the god of Self. In this sense, self refers to each individual
student’s own character. Adolescence is a tumultuous time of constant change, and students
often feel lost trying to find their true identity. By creating a positive and safe environment
through my disposition, I will foster the type of growth in my students that could, and hopefully
will, help them discover exactly who they are, as well as who they want to be. There are
countless ways that I can model this in the classroom. Take Postman’s example of the Fallen
Angel: I will indirectly teach students that even professionals mess up sometimes, and that it’s an
okay thing to do at any age. I will interact with my students not only in a teacher-to-student
manner but also in a human-to-human manner when necessary. Without a solid sense of self, we
can’t even consider serving my third and final god.
Last but not least, the god of Community will be ever present in my classroom. David
Sobel’s book, Place-Based Education, really opened my eyes to the fact that community was
never really emphasized in my secondary school years. He writes of the importance for students
to first learn about the “here-and-now” and then move onto the “long-ago-and-far-away.” This
concept, in a way, brings in Jerome Bruner’s theory on spiral curriculum, in which students
revisit “old” knowledge in order to acquire “new” knowledge. By learning about their own
community first, my students will be able to make connections to other places by noting the
differences and similarities between their own “old” community and the “new” community they
will earn about later on. This spiral, as Sobel writes about, could also end up encouraging
students to become more active in their own community, which would be the true assessment of
whether or not I have fully served this god.
These three gods form my philosophy on my responsibilities as a teacher. Laid out
graphically, they would form a triangle, one of the strongest shapes in the world. Full and total
knowledge is the ultimate goal for my students, but a focus on the self, as well as the community,
is detrimental for students to gain a worthwhile learning experience during their time with me.