To understand history, you must grasp how your everyday view of the world developed, how it was created by the reality of the people who lived before you. It took 1000 years to evolve the modern way of looking at things, and to really understand where you are today, you must take yourself back to the year 1000 and then move forward through the entire millennium experientially, as though you actually lived through the whole period yourself in a single lifetime.” (Redfield, 1994) I have chosen to become a history professor to open the minds of college students who have despised history, not because of the contents of what they are taught, but because of the way that they were taught. With an existentialist point of view on education, my teachings will be based on how individuals influences and reacted to certain events in history, not the events themselves.
In order to fully explain why I agree with the existentialist philosophy, I should point out why I feel this will help my ability to teach my students. Existentialists rely on self-reflection as a major tool. I can’t think of a better way to show a student what happened throughout history than by asking how he or she would react in that time period. Imagine being a jo
Existentialists also believe that a classroom should be an open forum for discussion. I plan on lecturing for the first half of my class and letting the students share their thoughts in the remaining half of the class. Knowing that all individuals think and act differently, this help to explain all sides of an event. One student may feel that our current situation warrants military action against Iraq while another student may be strongly opposed to America‘s use of force. By letting these individuals express their true feeling without judgment, I believe other students will better understand the situation at hand.
My educational philosophy is simple: let individuals express who they are and they in turn will want to reveal more to you. By letting an individual share his or her thoughts with a group gives them a feeling of self-gratification. Apollonius Rhodius once said, “those who learn to know themselves will surely discover that they themselves--through their own thoughts and deeds--create their own suffering.” (Rhodius, 3d Century BC) Isn’t it then true that the individuals that enlighten themselves through the knowledge of history and the knowledge of one’s true-self wil
Example Essays Home
