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Article Excerpt
In an article in the Journal of Teacher Education, Parker Palmer emphasized the importance of educating the soul in schools in general and in teacher education programs in particular. Palmer (2003) lamented the lack of attention given in schools to the spiritual dimension of our being:
I have seen the price we pay for a system of education so fearful of soulful things that it falls to address the real issues of our lives, dispensing data at the expense of meaning, facts at the expense of wisdom. The price is a schooling that alienates and dulls us, that graduates people who have had no mentoring in the questions that both vex and enliven the human spirit, people who are spiritually empty at best and spiritually toxic at worst. (p. 379)
For Palmer (2003), cultivating the spiritual dimension of our beings has to do with forging connections with something larger than our egos, such as relations with other human beings, with the world of nature, with a literary text, or with a cause aimed at making our world a better place to live.
Palmer (2003) is certainly not alone in his belief that self-knowledge and establishing relationships, meaning, and spirituality are all missing from education today; other theorists and educators like Nel Noddings, William Ayers, Alison Cook-Sather, and Ron Miller share his concern. For instance, Noddings (2006) wrote that "possibly no goal of education is more important--or more neglected--than self understanding" (p. 10). Ayers (1995) insisted that genuine learning is not primarily the passive ingestion of information, but "requires assent, desire, action; it is characterized by discovery and surprise" (p. 5). Cook-Sather (2003, p. 95; 2006, p. 9) pointed out that when students learn, they not only construct knowledge, but they also construct and transform themselves. Finally, Ron Miller (1997), one of the staunchest advocates of holistic education, claimed that
by dwelling on discrete facts rather than wonders and mysteries, by standardizing learning processes and assessing them quantitatively, by turning children away from their passions and intuitive insights, and in many other ways, modern schooling cuts the child off from knowing the world in its wholeness. (p. 80)
The concern with cultivating our spiritual dimensions and with forging connections is not new in Palmer's writings. In his famous book, The Courage to Teach, Palmer (1998) had already addressed these issues in the context of his discussion of good teaching:
Good teachers posses a capacity for connectedness. They are able to weave a complex web of connections among themselves, their subjects, and their students so that students can learn to weave a world for themselves. The methods used by these weavers vary widely: lectures, Socratic dialogues, laboratory experiments, collaborative problem solving, creative chaos. The connections made by good teachers are held not in their methods but in their hearts--meaning heart in its ancient sense, as the place where intellect and emotion and spirit and will converge in the human self. (p. 11)
I share Palmer's (1998) conviction that the capacity for connectedness is more integral to good teaching than technique and that when teaching is reduced to technique, something fundamental is lost. When I first started teaching in an undergraduate teachers college in Israel many years ago, several veteran professors advised me to "be very strict with the students and to lay down the law from the very outset so that they don't take advantage of you." Not having much experience of my own at that point, I initially followed these professors' advice and tried to portray a tough, no-nonsense persona to my students. The problem was not only that I felt uncomfortable in this persona but that my students recognized fairly quickly that I was not being authentic and therefore resisted my trying to teach them. Being disconnected from myself, I struggled to connect with both my students and my subject. As Palmer (1998) observed,
When I do not know myself, I cannot know who my students are. I will see them through a glass darkly, in the shadows of my unexamined life--and when I cannot see them clearly, I cannot teach them well. When I do not know myself, I cannot know my subject--not at the deepest levels of embodied, personal meaning. I will know it only abstractly, from a distance, a congeries of concepts as far removed from the world as I am from personal truth. (p. 2)
Palmer (1998) is probably right in his claim that knowing our students and subject matter--both necessary conditions for good teaching--depend heavily on knowledge of ourselves. Because bad teachers are often fragmented (have not established a coherent identity), they find it difficult to connect with both the subject they are teaching and their students. Which of us has not had the experience of a class taught by a disjointed and detached teacher? My own memory of being in such a class is clear, although the subject matter that was taught is nebulous at best. This particular class, Politics and Education, was an elective course I took in graduate school as part of a doctorate program in philosophy and education. The professor, who frequently seemed unprepared, had a very passive and unenthusiastic approach to teaching. Each lesson, he would walk into the room, pose a question to the entire class about one of the texts, and then facilitate a discussion about this question that turned into a tedious free association after about 15 minutes. Although discussions can be very exciting and fruitful, in this case they were always unfocused and did not seem to lead to any new insights. The professor never took charge of the discussion during the 2-hour class and himself seemed confused about the course's goals. Other students in the class shared my frustration with the professor and with the wandering and aimless nature of the conversations we had. The only thing I remember about the content of this course is writing a term paper about Machiavelli.
Although good teaching is informed by theories of how students learn and often relies on some proven practices and methods, Palmer (1998) has a point when he says that it is impossible to argue that all good teachers use similar techniques. My own experience interviewing scores of teacher candidates and asking them to talk about a teacher whom they admired and who made a significant impact on them confirms Palmer's assertion. When asked this question, teacher candidates typically recall teachers who "really cared about their students," ones who "were passionate about their subject and able to get others excited about it" and ones who "challenged [them] to think outside the box and learn in a deep way." Thus, my students' comments support Palmer's (1998, pp. 10-11) claim that good teachers have no unified method of instruction. Instead, these teachers are characterized by a strong sense of personal identity and an ability to connect with their students. This insight suggests that good teacher education programs are ones that respect a diversity of instructional styles and help their students develop their own approach to teaching. Specifically, Palmer seems to be challenging more teacher education programs to embrace an educational approach that will help teacher candidates cultivate a coherent sense of self and personal identity.
Assuming that Palmer (1998) is correct in his claims that good teaching depends more on our capacity for connectedness than on technique and that helping teacher candidates cultivate a strong sense of personal identity is crucial, to what extent are these...
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