A BASIC PHILOSOPHY OF EDUCATION

MARIA LERIZA S. RIVERA

By careful thinking he should decide what his educational aims are and how he proposes to achieve them. As a leader of the school he should know where he is going. His aims should be continuously reevaluated and subject to change in emphasis in the light of new evidence, but unless he keeps his ultimate goals constantly in view, he is likely to be distracted by the pressure of routine duties, the weight of the machinery of the school, and the conflict of competing ideas and forces that press in upon the school. No principal is able to meet all the demands upon his time, and necessarily he has many routine duties which like a habitforming drug protect him from the discomfort of thinking and constantly temp him to escape more and more into work that could be assumed by others. The machinery of the school operates on its own momentum in well-established paths, and changes are disturbing to everyone concerned. The principal is busy and tempted to let well enough alone. People who are selfish , and reformers who mean well, all hope to achieve their aims through the schools. Often their schemes are in line with the objectives of the schools. Often they are not.

The principal who has not thought out and in some degree popularized his educational aims is ineffectual in coping with these pressure groups. He has no measuring sticks with which to judge their proposals and no backing from the community on his decisions. He needs a frame of reference that he has made from himself or thought through and accepted from someone else which will guide all his efforts toward ultimate goals and protect him from his own desire for comfort, the inertia of the school, and the aggressions of forces that would use the school from their own ends.

The author is Master Teacher East District

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I at Cabangcalan Elementary School, Floridablanca