Education is a life-long process. Anyone can learn, and anyone can educate. Formal education should not be memorization and recitation. Reading out of a book a concept and blindly accepting it as true, never questioning what a teacher or writer tells you. This is not education, it is indoctrination. Educators should teach students to question everything. To ask why something is, and to receive an adequate answer. As educators, we should teach children not what to think, but how to think. We should not just teach them that this book is where answers are, and they should accept those answers. Instead, we should teach students how to find their own answers. We should guide them in their pursuit of these answers, and help them if necessary. 

In the real world, there is no one with a book or powerpoint to tell you the answer. I feel this is how the education system is set up, or was when I was a student. I did have a few teachers who taught me how to think, how to find my own answers, but the majority of my education was the tried and true memorization and recitation. Forced group work meant I would carry the load for the other group members, because I did not want my grade to suffer due to others not caring. Personal responsibility is an ideal that I have always lived by, and I feel the current education system does students no favors in this regard. Students should be the ones ultimately responsible for their performance in the classroom. Teachers should assist them as much as possible, but the result should be the student’s to decide. Only then will they learn the most valuable life lesson, that actions have consequences.

I want to be a teacher because I love history and want to share and instill that love in students. Many students see history as a dull subject, but I want to show them that it is just as exciting and important as other subjects.My vision for my future classroom is a space for questioning and exploring. I want my students to question everything, even me if necessary. Through questioning what they know or what they think they know, I believe students will find their true beliefs and voice. Having worked through their doubts, ideas, and questions, they will have found a more meaningful knowledge than if they had taken the information at face value.

As an educator, my objective is to teach students how to think critically and analytically. History is not a set of facts sitting lifelessly in a book. It is a series of complex actions, where if any one was out of place, an entirely different outcome could have occurred. Winston Churchill once said, “History will be kind to me, for I intend to write it.” Truer words were never spoken. History is, largely, written and shaped by those who won. However, there are multiple version of history which, when combined together, provide the most accurate picture of what happened. Learning from outside of textbooks is something I believe strongly in, as it provides the most well-rounded account of the past. I also feel asking students to think beyond the facts, asking “what would have happen if…” is the best way to get students to analyze history and make it their own. While my criticisms of education may be harsh, my hopes for what it can be, and what I hope to make it, could not be more positive.