You Can Not Pick an Educational Philosophy, You Have to Build One


 




  • Contrary to the advice frequently given to homeschool moms, you can not “choose” your homeschooling philosophy. ⁣⁣
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    You must craft it. ⁣⁣
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    You can not simply decide upon a philosophy after you “shop around” in a list of Major Philosophies (Charlotte Mason, Waldorf, Classical, etc) and Minor Philosophies (Project Based, World Schooling, Academic, etc). ⁣⁣
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    You can not superimpose the philosophy of another upon your own homeschool. ⁣⁣
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    To attempt to do so is to believe that a single person possessed every bit of knowledge, insight, and experience regarding the education of children. ⁣⁣
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    The advice to do so flows from a fundamental misunderstanding about the nature of philosophy. ⁣⁣
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    Philosophy is mutable and personal. ⁣⁣
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    Please don’t mishear me; Formal Philosophy (the work done by those gifted as professional or formal philosophers) plays a vital role in shaping our own. ⁣⁣
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    Formal Philosophy is:⁣⁣
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    1️⃣ Perspective Demonstrated - ⁣⁣
    giving you the opportunity to SEE and visualize philosophical ideas applied ⁣⁣
    2️⃣ Personhood Defined- clarifying, solidifying, and diversifying our understanding of what it is to be a person ⁣⁣
    3️⃣ Principles as Direction- ⁣⁣
    offering us a map for our own exploration ⁣⁣
    4️⃣ Practicalities Defended-⁣⁣
    providing some validity to practices that you are instinctively drawn to⁣⁣
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    Formal Educational Philosophy also impacts the canon and the culture by multiplying the contributions of nuance and ideas for us to explore and glean from. ⁣⁣
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    Formal Philosophy informs and inspires, and it matters. ⁣⁣
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    We should read the theories of formal educational philosophers but we can not simply “pick one”. ⁣⁣
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    And, we must do more than “research”; curriculum reviews and anecdotal posts coupled with beautiful flat lays are not research and that isn’t the work of crafting philosophy. ⁣⁣
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    Formal Philosophy is help for the work of crafting; it isn’t available for “choosing”. ⁣⁣
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    We must think, observe, ponder, question, compare, interpret, and explore in order to build our own educational philosophy… ⁣⁣
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    As did all of the philosophers that we’re inspired by. ⁣⁣
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    That’s the nature of Philosophy. ⁣⁣

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