By Professor Giovane Batista
When people think about the most crucial aspect of education, they think about the importance of helping students to think critically about the world in which they live. Currently, the world’s limits are not a city or country of birth but the actual process called globalization. This point is essential to the contribution of sociology. Learning must be transformative in ways that can improve students’ lives and, at the same time, incentivize critical thinking. An educator, in any area, must inform and contribute to forming personalities. In past societies, cultural traditions quickly explained the world around people. With the development of new communication technologies, rationality has replaced cultural traditions. This change of perspective obliges every one, especially educators, to think about their role permanently and realize that they are not at the top of the pyramid of knowledge, as argued by some thinkers in history, but entered and helped to build a more just society and conscious. I confess my passion by Max Weber and Emile Durkheim. The first one thought in the process of scientific rationalization, but at the same time, he looked like a man without hope in a world in which scientific logic would set the rules that people need to obey. Emile Durkheim inspires my teaching philosophy because he observes education not just as linked to “rationality” but as a social value whose function is to transmit its values and consequently maintain an integrated culture. Another aspect of Durkheim’s education is acquiring knowledge and training to improve their opportunities in the marketplace. Education has been essential in promoting democratic values. As stated by Martin Lipset, an American sociologist, “When people have access to education, they understand the need to share democracy. When they do not have access to education, they can be victims of totalitarian theories.” In Latin America, where little investment in education became catastrophic for the economy with a substantial increase in poverty levels and for the public institutions in some parts of Latin America, corrupt politicians have dominated to take advantage of the low educational levels to perpetuate themselves in power. Great educators have incentivized positive habits of life that generate ideas of exploitation of human beings, respect for cultural diversity, and establish a critical analysis of possible transformations and full search for a world where ethical ideals and full citizenship for all who dwell on the planet. Believing in the importance of the educator is a task of the nation in achieving a sustainable and equitable world and constructing citizenship practices in all moments of life.
Often, I ask this question: What do I still want to work as a teacher? After three decades of teaching in other countries, the chance to teach in Canada makes me look like a young tutor. I have tutored people of different profiles and in various environments. I have lectured for wealthy, poor, slum dwellers, artists, and educators in prisons, police headquarters, hotels, companies, universities, and schools. I love this job but realized there is still something to learn. Unlike the character Shakespeare’s King Lear, reach wisdom before reaching old age.
I understand education as a practice in which the pedagogical foundations assist in understanding beliefs, values, and social norms. An educator, rather than a teacher, is someone who every year turns because the educational environment transforms us. For this reason, I never believed in “experts” in education who have never been in a classroom as a teacher. They do not know what they are talking about.
Finally, I believe that in this profession, it is necessary to be attentive to others; educators can not transform teaching into a mental training tool. Educators cannot be reductionists. To quote the British philosopher Bertrand Russel,” We are faced with the paradoxical fact that education has become one of the chief obstacles to intelligence and freedom of thought.” It is part of the tasks of a true educator to prevent this from happening. We are condemned to hope.