My Personal Philosophy of Education

2001

For millions of women across the world¹ the core of their existence is tyranny and subjugation in the form of the burga in Afghanistan; child slavery and prostitution in Asia; female genital mutilation in Africa, Malaysia and the Middle East; incest in the Caribbean; child pornography and the "glass ceiling" in America and Europe; rape and domestic violence around the globe; Biblically supported patriarchy in the Church; and the denial of pastoral authority to women in the Roman Catholic Church and the Seventh-Day-Adventist Church.² The essence of female subjugation is reflected in the words of Plato: "Being born a woman is a divine punishment, since a woman is halfway between a man and an animal." Aristotle argued: "Women are inferior to men in their ability to reason." "A man’s courage is in commanding, a woman’s in obeying." Socrates spoke of woman as "the weaker sex."³

The oppression of women, one of the manifestations of humanity’s fallenness, must be placed in the larger context of the cosmic battle between God and Satan. In this battle, God stands as the Conqueror over evil and the Liberator of all the oppressed–those oppressed by sin and social injustice. This theme is echoed in the words of Jesus who said: "The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of the sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor." Though affected by sin, through Christ, humans have the capacity to grow spiritually, morally, and intellectually.

How do I know that the subjugation of women is the greatest evil perpetrated against humankind? I know from experience, having witnessed my mother’s humiliation and degradation . I know it is evil because God opposes it: "I hate divorce, says the Lord God of Israel, and a man who covereth himself with violence as well as with his garment says the Lord Almighty." If reason is a source of knowledge, then I can use it to deduce that male and female were created equal. For in the beginning, God created male and female in His own image with the power to think, to reason, to choose, to decide, to do. My "guts feeling" tells me that the subjugation of women in all its overt and covert forms is abhorrent to God for it violates God’s principle of government: Love and Equity.⁴

Through sin, human nature and relationships have been corrupted.⁵ My axiology is thus self-evident: The reconciliation of humankind to God and the restoration of equality and balance of power between men and women. What is of value is self-realization for me and for all women. What is right is gender equity. What is beautiful is mutuality, cooperation, sharing, flexibility, interdependence, and harmony between the genders. This restoration of balance and power and equality should be the focus of education.⁶

According to Youngberg (1994), "the word education comes from the Latin educare, to draw out. In a broad sense it means not only to elicit creative thought and knowledge from the student, but to draw humankind out of the predicament it is in.⁷

" Thus, the implications for education are straightforward: (1) Schooling should involve the questioning of the power structure within the home, the Church, the school, and the society. (2) Learning should promote collaboration and cooperation between the sexes and collaborative styles of learning among students (3) Education should effectuate "a liberation of the male psyche from preoccupation with domination, power hunger, control of patriarchal culture." (Haki Madhubiti). (4) Education should also promote the liberation of women from submissiveness to a male authority figure. (5) Education should validate and empower women to take their rightful place as leaders in the home, the Church, and society. (6) Education should provide the means to transform this society into a more equitable one. (7) Educational institutions should practice true democracy instead of perpetuating exiting inequities. (8) Education should enable students to become change agents. (9) Education should provide third-world women the means to support their families. (10) Education should prepare women (and men) for heaven.

Notes:

1. A United Nations report, Women’s Inequality Hurts Economies, dated September 20, 2000, states: "Women throughout the world continue to be the victims of violence, sexual exploitation and discrimination–at a considerable cost to their countries’ economies."

2. Although, some of these injustices have been redressed, the basic presupposition on which male dominance is predicated has not changed--leadership in the home and in the church is a male prerogative derived from divine right and from the innate intellectual inferiority of women. Elizabeth Badinter, philosopher, comments on those two points in her book, Mother Love Myth & Reality. "The underlying principle of Aristotle’s political philosophy is that the authority of the male is legitimate because it rests on the natural inequality that exists between human beings. . . As far as the female citizen is concerned, she is essentially inferior to the male, no matter what his age. . . As she is endowed with only a meager capacity for reflection, the philosopher logically concludes that her views are no great loss" (p. 9). In her analysis of political absolutism, she states: "The final argument invoked by Bossuet is founded on the analogy between the king and God the Father. It is not enough, in effect, to found the authority of the monarchy on that of the father–that is, to make it a natural law. To strengthen his argument, Bossuet attempts to establish political authority as a divine right. To accomplish this he once again uses the father as metaphor. God, he says, is the perfect model of fatherhood. Now the king is the image of God on earth, father of his subjects; and an ordinary father of a family fills the role of divine and royal ruler with regard to his children. Everyone comes out ahead as a result of these analogies: The father of the family gains in splendor and authority, and the king in goodness and holiness" (p. 17). Steven Goldberg in his "Why men rule: a theory of male dominance," (1993) states that male dominance is predicated on endocrinology and hierarchy.

3. Secondary sources from Bristow, John, 1988. What Paul Really Said About Women. San Francisco: Harper Collins Publishers. Original sources Plato, Timaeus, trans. H.D.P. Baltimore, Penguine 1965. Plato, The Republic, trans. W.H.D. Rouse. New York: Mentor, 1956. Stephen Jay Gould, Hen’s Teth and Horse’s Toes. New York: Norton, 1984.

Schubert (1986) mentioned that women were not considered citizens in Ancient Greece. The Jews themselves had similar beliefs. They are vividly expressed by Rabbi Eliezer who wrote, "Rather should the words of the Torah be burned than entrusted to a woman. . . . Whoever teaches his daughter the Torah is like one who teaches her lasciviousness." (Van Leeuwen et al., After Eden, p. 8).Thus, it would not be far fetched to conclude that our Judeo-Christian principles have been greatly influenced by the Greek philosophers. The rights of women have been placed in the same category as the rights of animals. In his case for animal liberation, Peter Singer states: "The idea of the Rights of Animals" actually was once used to parody the case for women’s rights. When Mary Wollstonecraft, a forerunner of today’s feminists, published her Vindication of the Rights of Women in 1792, her views were widely regarded as absurd, and before long an anonymous publication appeared entitled A Vindication of the Rights of Brutes. The author of this satirical work tried to refute Mary Wollstonecraft’s arguments by showing that they could be carried one stage further. If the argument for equality was sound applied to women, why should it not be applied to dogs, cats, and horses. . . " (Pojman, Philosophy The Quest for Truth, p. 594).

4. Here I make allusion to the ways in which knowledge can be apprehended: through the senses, revelation, reason, authority, reason, and intuition. In my argument, I do not appeal to human authority, for this knowledge is only valid as the assumptions on which it stands. John Locke supports the view that all knowledge begins with sensory experiences on which the powers of the mind operate, developing complex ideas, abstractions, and the like (Pojman, p. 136). This way of apprehending knowledge was really the starting point of my journey into feminism. It then progressed into intuition, reason, and revelation (not necessarily in this order).

5. Here I make allusion to the ways in which knowledge can be apprehended: through the senses, revelation, reason, authority, reason, and intuition. In my argument, I do not appeal to human authority, for this knowledge is only valid as the assumptions on which it stands. John Locke supports the view that all knowledge begins with sensory experiences on which the powers of the mind operate, developing complex ideas, abstractions, and the like (Pojman, p. 136). This way of apprehending knowledge was really the starting point of my journey into feminism. It then progressed into intuition, reason, and revelation (not necessarily in this order).

6. Mrs. White mentions that human nature must be taken into consideration before education takes place. She says: "There is in his nature a bent to evil, a force, which, unaided, he cannot resist. To withstand this force, to attain that ideal which in his inmost soul he accepts as alone worthy, he can find help in but one power. That power is Christ. Co-operation with that power is man’s greatest need. In all educational effort should not this co-operation be the highest aim?" (Education, p. 29)

7. Youngberg, John B. (1994). Transmitting the religious heritage: A history of religious education, p. 69.

 

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