Everything depends on the person who stands in front of the classroom. The teacher is not an automatic fountian from which intellectual beverages may be obtained. the teacher is either a witness or a stranger. To guide a pupil into the promised land, she must have been there herself. When asking herself: Do I stand for what I teach? Do I believe what I say? she must be able to answer in the affirmative.
What we need more than anything else is not textbooks but textpeople. It is the personality of the teacher which is the text that the pupils read; the text that they will never forget.
The Insecurity of Freedom, 39-40
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I've come back to this post a few times, it's made me think! Sometimes teachers (except maybe in the sciences at lower academic levels)have to teach material with which they do not agree or in which they do not believe. So how do they offer the requisite affirmative? I think it must their willingness to engage with that which discomfits, challenges, offends which they then teach... perhaps it is too easy to confuse the acquisition of subject matter with the process of learning to learn?
As a 'text person' do I model what I want to encourage others to do/be rather than simply transmit information in the abstract? And what are the challenges and responsibilities that brings with something as subjective and intensely sensitive as faith?
Good stuff to 'chew' on, I think
Posted by: Catriona | July 25, 2010 at 09:19 AM