The Value of Philosophy Essay example

As a student of education, I have been able to gather many ideas and opinions about practices and ideals I want to implement in my future classroom. My philosophies about education are still being formed and continually change with every class I visit and with every educator I encounter. My ideas, admittedly, come from random experiences and intangible texts, but as I gain more experience in the field through my courses, my philosophies about teaching will become more clearly defined. These few ideas I have now will undoubtedly be added upon as I enter student teaching and my professional career, nevertheless, they are concepts of which I hope to never lose sight.

“Let’s create an AIDS/HIV-free generation”, which is not only a slogan that was proposed by President Obama but also a goal that I would like to achieve on my future career path. My practicum project at the Department of Health and Human Services was to generate dataset of new AIDS/HIV cases in Houston/Harris area required by the Center for Disease Control and Prevention, and then to use ArcGIS software to make a map describing the new diagnosed in Houston area. The final products can be spatially lined to other sources to enhance understanding of social determinants of health affecting populations impacted by HIV. This practicum experience let me realize that AIDS spreads so quickly is because most people have insufficient knowledge or misconception about the disease and prevention. Becoming a pharmacist to provide prevention service and educate people to improve their health and wellbeing is how I want to reach the goal of creating an AIDS/HIV-free generation.

“Inclusion, not exclusion, is the key to survival.” What does this mean? To say the least, the definition is clearly stated in The Power of One, as well as Richard Wright’s Black Boy. Actually, both these works resemble each other by both having many types of isolation. Initially, P.K. in The Power of One and Richard in Black Boy are isolated by members of their family. Subsequently, they are both excluded by society because of their backgrounds. Ultimately, they are excluded within their own races because of their actions throughout their stories.

According to Lundberg (2003), “adult students are one of the most rapidly growing segments of today’s college student population, making up approximately 40% of all college students” (665).

Literacy embraces reading, writing, listening, and speaking. Integrating all of these into a literacy program is key. Teachers must provide endless and ongoing opportunities for their student to read, write, listen, and speak.

His aim was to use this method of doubting everything you know to discover what we actually do know for certain. So we can prove them.

Philosophy is defined by Webster as "Love and pursuit of wisdom by intellectual means and moral self-discipline" or "Investigation of the nature, causes, or principles of reality, knowledge, or values, based on logical reasoning rather than empirical methods." This essay is a general look at those who pursued that intellectual means, those who investigated, even those who reasoned Reason. Because volumes could be written and this is a rather quick, unworthy paper: apologizes.

Read the article Diagnosis Coding and Medical Necessity: Rules and Reimbursement by Janis Cogley located on the AHIMA Body of Knowledge (BOK) at http://www.ahima.org.

However after awhile their eyes adjust and are able to see not only the shadows, but reflections and eventually people themselves, as Plato wrote “when he remembered his old habitation and the wisdom of the den and his fellow prisoners, do you not suppose that he would felicitate himself on the change, and pity them?” (Plato 870). After being outside for awhile they are eventually thrown back into the blinding darkness of the cave.

All individuals spend some, if not the entirety of their life in what Socrates describes as, “a cave with a long passageway stretching between [them] and the cave’s mouth,” (Sterling and Scott 209). Cave dwellers find contentment in the shadows on the wall of the cave, never desiring to uncover the root of the shadows and counter fit images. They, unlike philosophers, possess little courage, and desire never to be freed of their shackles and blinders. Philosophers, the minority population of cave dwellers, are those prisoners who not only escape bondage, but have an overwhelming urge to journey outside the cave once they are freed: “One prisoner is freed from his shackles. He is suddenly compelled to stand up, turn around, walk and look toward the light,” (Sterling and Scott 210). The journey from darkness to light, as painted by Socrates, involves pain, confusion, ridicule, and sometimes death; however, those who journey towards the light ultimately reach a greater awareness of true reality, not the disguised reality of shadows and false images on the cave’s walls. Socrates states, “It is a conversion, a turning of the soul away from the day whose light is darkness to the true day. It is the accent to

Socrates describes people in a cave since birth, bound so they can only see what is in front of them. There are shadows and sounds that can be observed but the source is unknown. Socrates says in 515c, “…such men would hold that the truth is nothing other than the shadows of artificial things.” Their reality is limited by their experience. Then a prisoner is freed from the bonds and is forced to look at the fire and the statues that were used to cast the shadows on the walls. He is overwhelmed by the revelations and learns that the shadows were not the reality.

The question that the textbook poses at the very beginning of chapter four is, “Are you Free” (Chaffee, 2013, p. 172)? Most people would look at this question as pretty cut and dry and would answer a resounding yes. Philosophically speaking, it is not that easy of an answer. You have to be willing to look at the question with an open mind, and ask yourself if the choices you make are truly free or if they are governed by forces outside of your control.

Aristotle once said, “The one exclusive sign of thorough knowledge is the power of teaching.” Teaching enables students to gain the intelligence needed to excel in life. I believe that a teacher’s philosophy of education is a crucial role in his or her approach to leading students on their educated path. A philosophy of education is the set of beliefs that every school and every teacher stand behind. The certain philosophy that one chooses provides the answers to many vital questions, such as the purpose of schooling, a teacher’s role, and what should be taught in the classroom.

Philosophy is the study of examining and thinking about questionable ethical problems and/or generally accepted certainties. Philosophy aims at knowledge that combines a variety of academic fields as well as convictions, prejudices and beliefs.

In “The Value of Philosophy”, Bertrand Russell— “an important social critic and one of the greatest philosophers of the 20th century”—refutes the idea of philosophy being pointless and a waste of time (The Value of Philosophy). Although philosophers have not agreed on one exact definition for this branch of knowledge, philosophy is generally understood as an “academic discipline” which aims to cover a variety of topics through arguing, inquiring, assuming, and “testing arguments for weakness” in order to gain knowledge and grasp a better sense of life (Lectures 1-2, Package). Russell makes strong arguments for philosophy being beneficial, especially when one is open to seeking a deeper understanding of life and why the universe operates the way that it does. Despite philosophy’s inability to definitively answer the questions that it seeks to understand, in Russell’s opinion, it holds a great amount of value—one of those values being uncertainty.