Category Archives: My educational philosophy

The real blind man

Leave a reply

After today’s lecture I decided to watch the rest of “The Real Blind Man Honesty Test” on youtube and am shocked at how some people reacted. I was appalled to see the first man take $50 off the “blind” man, to then look around and run off with the money. I can’t believe someone could take advantage of what was perceived to be such a vulnerable individual. The second lady was more truthful and informed the man that he was infact handing over a $50 note instead of $5, which I thought most people would do. Unfortunately yet another person tried to take advantage of the sScreen Shot 2015-11-13 at 10.50.33ituation by taking the $50 and giving only $5 change. I can’t imagine doing this to someone who clearly can’t tell the difference and would have no clue that he had been robbed of $50. I found it interesting that both men so far have used the situation to their financial advantage and both women have pointed out the mans error and given him correct change.

The older generation also seem to be considerate and despite not having change take it upon themselves to inform the man that he has $50 and not $5 which could potentially stop the next person taking advantage of him if this were a real life situation. At one point the “blind” man actually asked another man “that was my five note wasn’t it?” He had actually handed over the $50 but the gentleman still replied “yes of course it was.” I can’t believe how many people were willing to take advantage of a vulnerable citizen who was simply looking for some change. I thoughtScreen Shot 2015-11-13 at 10.50.51 by watching till the end of the clip that perhaps someone would give the man change and not take the $5 or $50 note. I was totally shocked when one man took the $50 and swapped it for a lower valued note and had the nerve to pretend that he had returned the $50. I found it interesting that when questioned afterwards he acted as if he didn’t know and that he was sorry. However had this been a real life situation he would’ve walked off profiting from another person’s error.

I feel like before this clip I was maybe slightly naive about the lengths people would go to for easy money. This video seriously made me think about our morals as individuals and as a society and has made me want to look further into what defines our morals and why some people don’t seem to develop them. I genuinely believe that the people in this clip would be nice people and I don’t think that in their daily lives would cause any harm to anyone. However on this day they took advantage of a situation and I hope that they learned their lesson. If I was in this situation I know for a fact I would never take $50 and pretend like it was a $5, no matter how poor my own financial situation was. This situation is worsened by the fact these people are stealing money off who they believe is a blind man.

I am left wondering, do these people have poor morals? Was this just a one off? And what would my friends do if in the same situation?

 

 

Social Work Module

Leave a reply

I chose Social Work as my elective as it is something I have always found interesting. Partly because my mum’s best friend is a social worker and has told me many stories about how useful knowing some of their theories will be to me in my teaching career. Our module is all about collaborative advantage and what it means to work together. I feel that the research I am currently doing for my assignment will benefit me in my future teaching career. So far I have researched: GIRFEC, the GTCS, Scottish Social Services Council and CLD standards. I am now beginning to understand how they all interlink and the importance of understanding other professions and their values.

Working alongside CLD and Social Work students is very interesting. I believe this will be beneficial for the future as we will all have to work with each profession in order to solve multiple problems associated within working with children across all three careers. I hope that learning to work together with trainee social workers and CLD students now, will make me more confident in working collaboratively in the future. Collaboration is extremely important amongst many professions in order to avoid tragedies such as the death of Victoria Climbe.

For our placement on the 26th of October. My group will be visiting PAMIS. A Dundee charity which works with children who suffer from multiple disabilities and their families. Through reading up on PAMIS I have discovered that they also raise funds to better the lives of the people they work with. They run several schemes which support families throughout their journey, they also have a bereavement and loss service and try their best to provide accessible leisure to disabled children. I am extremely looking forward to seeing their work first hand and hope that I can learn valuable lessons which I will be able to take forward with me into my teaching career.

Philosophy

Leave a reply

Before our lectures with John, I had never learnt or really thought about philosophy. I found many of the concepts in our lectures extrememly interesting but at the same time very confusing. It has taken me a while to get my head around some of the key concepts.

In one of the lectures we were introduced to Plato’s theory of forms. John used a chair as an example and we discussed what makes a chair, a chair. Upon further reading I have found out that Plato believes we can get answers to the questions “what is virtue? And what is justice?” To answer these questions he came up with the theory of the forms. Plato believes that if you can find the true being of virtue and of true justice, you can find its true form. He implies that all things have a true being. The world we live in is a poor imitation of the real world. Our world is constantly changing and we rely on our senses to understand what is going on. We as humans are in a constant state of flux. Plato is sure the real world is outside the world we live in. The world is unchanging and eternal.

Another concept of Plato’s I cam across what that the world is divided into two worlds, the visible and the intelligible. We can only grasp the intelligible with our minds. Furthermore, the soul does not change, it is eternal. It is connected with the real world of the forms. The world of the forms is the philosophers world. Only the person who investigates and questions learns the truth of the illusion and normal people are ruled by senses cannot see past the illusion. The material world is simply a shadow of the real world of the forms. It is the job of the philosopher to break away from the real world and find the world of the forms.

We were introduced to many other philosophers in John’s lectures such as, Dewey, Gramsci, Greene and Aristotle. Each have different beliefs and views on education. I hope that by further research I can broaden my understanding of their concepts and philosophy as a whole. I feel that these lectures will be extremely valuable when it comes to our VIVAS. I was not looking forward to the philosophy section as I felt totally clueless, however I know feel slightly more at ease and wish to improve my knowledge through further reading and research.

Why teaching?

2 Replies

I didn’t always want to be a primary school teacher, when I was younger I wanted to teach music. I started learning to play the violin in Primary 3, and then began learning the piano in P6. After a while I really began to enjoy music and could see myself teaching it. When I started high school music remained my favourite subject and up until the end of 4th year I wanted to study to be a secondary music teacher. However my mind was changed when I passed my grade 8 piano, I realised that teaching music everyday would take away the enjoyment of my hobby. In 5th year I began a sports leadership course through the P.E. department. After 6 weeks of learning one sport we would then teach local primary school children what we had learned. I really enjoyed this and decided that although I didn’t want to be a music teacher, I still enjoyed teaching but preferred primary teaching. I completed a ten week placement for 2 hours every Friday at my local primary school and enjoyed being able to help children develop their skills and found seeing their progress week by week was really rewarding.

At this point I find it hard to say what kind of teacher I’d want to be. Although I’d like to think that when I do start teaching I would be supportive and make learning as enjoyable as possible for my class. I think that finding ways to enhance each individual child’s learning is important too and hope that overtime I can develop skills to do this.