Blog Post 10

Do You Teach or Do You Educate?

Before this class, I honestly never considered the difference between teaching and educating. I now see how significant that difference really is. I looked up the words "teach" and "educate" in the dictionary. To teach is "to impart knowledge or skill to." And to impart is simply "to make known, tell, relate, disclose." On the other hand, to educate is "to develop the faculties and powers of a person." I think we can agree that the latter seems the most powerful and effective of the two.

In my very first post, I gave a brief description of myself and why I entered the field of education. Although I used the phrases "I've always wanted to teach" and "I think teaching would be a very rewarding experience for me," I did conclude the thought with "I'm entering the field of health education with hopes that I can influence young adults to make informed decisions among all of the pressures in society today." So perhaps I did grasp the concept of teaching versus educating, but I didn't realize it. In any event, I'm surely aware now that educating is the key to success. I don't want to just "tell" them what I know from what I read in books. I may only be 26 years old, but I have some experience in the world, and I want to be able to use those experiences to help guide my students towards happier, healthier lives.

Don't Let Them Take Pencils Home

Along with Dr. McLeod's post, Don't teach your kids this stuff. Please?, I thought this was another clever way to address the "issue" of technology in the classroom. It's a shame, however, that so many people missed the message again. If you think about it, we're in a class emphasizing the use of technology to aid in the learning experience. Is it really as simple as where we should use our pencils and how? Or is the pencil just an object used to represent something else? Something more relevant to the purpose of our class? We need to think outside of the box a little.

The excuses for not allowing the use of "pencils" could be endless. This post mentions the paradigm of the poor. That the "pencil" would be used for entertainment purposes. While it is true that "clever marketers tailor 'pencil' use in poor areas toward entertainment," it is up to us to change that outlook. And it's certainly not solved by taking away the "pencil." As educators, we must explain the different ways the "pencil" could be used for learning. Not only that, but give the students assignments that will keep their interest. And if they stray from that, and use the "pencil" in other ways, that's okay! There's no limit to where or how learning can take place. Let's not fall in that trap of limiting our students and taking away their creativity. Let them explore and see where their "pencils" take them.