are you feeling philisophical?

because i'm not. and that's what i'm supposed to be writing my 8-10 page paper about for my current class; school and society: my educational philosophy. at the beginning of the course, all the students took a "test". i compare it to something you might find at tickle.com, like "what's your cat's true identity" or my favorite, "who's your hollywood match" (though i haven't actually taken that one since the late 90's and at the time it was will smith. my guess is that it may have changed somewhat since then...)

anyway, this is not to belittle my professor, as i think he's quite interesting and might be on the brilliant side. just for the record, he is, among his many other degrees, phd's, and assorted other impressive whats-its, a therapist as well. if he weren't my teacher, i might make an appointment with him to work out some obvious issues. but this test was so cryptic and had 90 questions all of which were sooo ambiguous, and i know your supposed to read fast and answer with the first thing that comes to your mind, but come on! when the first half of the statement or question is saying the opposite of the second half, how can you really give one response to it?

needless to say, in the end enlightenment did not come. there are five educational philosophies to "choose" from: idealism, essentialism, pragmatism, existentialism and behaviorism. after i completed this torturous test, which was supposed to reveal my true philosophical outlook, and added up the points it turns out (surprise, surprise) that it didn't really tell me jack shit.

i scored equally lowest in the first two (idealism and essentialism) and equally highest in the next two (pragmatism and existentialism). i scored, as you may have guessed, right in the middle of the two with behaviorism, which makes sense because it is a newer philosophy that easily "blends" with all of the others. blah. i know you must be bored reading this (i'm bored writing it) but i don't care. i have to share this misery with someone.

all this really tells me is that i am a young, inexperienced teacher just starting out in the world of public education and have not yet developed my own, personal educational philosophy. so how the heck am i supposed to ramble on for 8-10 pages, with conviction and multiple citations, about an educational philosophy i'm not even sure about yet?

oh. i guess i just kind of did that, in a smaller, rough draft kind of way.

ok then. back to my homework. if anyone has any suggestions along these lines, i'm more than willing to listen. for the time being, i'm calling myself a pragmatic existentialist. sounds fancy and interesting. like i should be debating and hypothesizing at my local coffee shop with my peers. god that sounds horrible at the moment. isn't there a scrubs re-run on right about now?