#6012reflection4

[coolclarence]

reflection 4, by Clarence

  The ideology that touches me the most is Seymour Simmons idea of bringing forth an existential approach with pedagogy. 

  On page 50, there was a quote pertaining to inquiry, based lessons around questions: Inquiry based lessons around existential questions explicitly involve multiple intelligences. They will obviously engage existential intelligence as students thoughtfully pursue the object of concern, while intrapersonal intelligence will come into play as students reflect on the personal significance combined with logical and linguistic intelligences will enter in as teacher and students pose questions to prompt deeper reflections.  Finally, spatial intelligence along with several others will required for creative art projects (50).”   I feel strongly that asking deep questions such as “Who are you?” “Where do you come from?” and “Where do you want to go in life?” invoke power emotions and invoke an understanding of one self.   After reading this I thought about teachers who’ve asked the forbidden questions such as Socrates.  When the author was talking about Socrates I couldn’t help thinking about a quote once said by him who in my opinion was a devote existentialist who blended it with his teaching: “  I cannot teach anybody anything. I could only make them think.” The way the greatest teacher who ever lived made people think was saying meaningful things like this: The unexamined life is not worth living.” After when Socrates was murdered, his memory lived on in the new progressive movement in the minds of Plato, and Aristotle, who both channeled ideas given by Socrates, laying  the foundation for education 2400 years ago.   Simmons picked a perfect example for her paper promoting existentialist intelligence, because it truly transforms  experience and the knowing of who you are and where you come from as a student and as a teacher. 

                        As for my personal experience with learning through existentialism, knowledge about myself in relation with my surrounding environment and within, my insights continues to expand even with pain. For example, for a short while, I have been some what chastised by those of the insecure realm who claim to do that for good reasons, and it is by my own internal and external examination of myself along with their intentions, I have concluded the following quote by existentialist describing the falsehoods of people: “From the deepest desires often come the deadliest hate.”  I often learn from those teacher’s who are truly existentialists, and because of them, I have a stronger sense of who I am, my professionalism, my imagination, my will to with stand even the most bombastic of entities.  The more I’m confronted by people proclaiming what norm is, the more I internally question it and transcend the mediocre minded.  After reading the article and hearing about Socrates, I truly understand what Christ said while he was being crucified: “for give them father, for they do not know what they do.”  Existentialism is truly a wonderful thing to fuse with education, and the inner growth that could come from that is limitless.   It provides a means of knowing what we do, and why we do it.