Knowing, Teaching and Learning in Community

                                   Dedicated to Prof. B P Khandelwal -A true educationist

Greetings to all my readers. This article comes to you again during a rather difficult and distressed time than before. Many of us, including myself, have been reeling under a lot of emotional turmoil and heartaches. But the key to fighting our way out, in addition to following safety measures, is staying together and staying positive. I therefore, reach out to each one of you, to take care of yourself and people around you, not just physically but emotionally and hereby share with you a good read, something that helps me keep my mind happy, and hopefully it will for you too.

The current article is a continuation of the last one, i.e. my learning from my latest favorite book ‘The Courage to Teach – Exploring the Inner Landscape of a Teacher’s Life’ by Parker J Palmer. In the last one, I had written mostly about inner forces of a teacher’s personality like self hood, fear, paradoxes, etc that connect or disconnect us from our students and our subject. The current one will be more about how building the teacher’s inner landscape will ultimately translate into the general good.

Teaching, as I also mentioned earlier is a public profession, which bears the responsibility of building a community of learners where education can thrive. And such a community cannot take root in a disconnected life. Creating such a community, as Palmer calls it, is an outward and visible sign of an inward and invisible grace, the flowing of a teacher’s personal identity and integrity into the world of relationships. The kind of community that Palmer seeks is one that can embrace, guide and refine the core mission of education – the mission of knowing, teaching and learning; the onus of which falls on us teachers. Thus, in this article, based on the second part of the book, I will talk about knowing, teaching and learning in community.

To begin with, Palmer talks about three different models of community in education – the therapeutic, civic and marketing. The therapeutic model, as he explains is one where intimacy is considered to be the best therapy for the pain of disconnection. Intimacy or an intimate relationship is one where we share our deeper natures with each other, in the belief that we can be fully known and trust that we will be fully accepted. But a conventional application of such a model of community to education is neither subtle nor apt, simply because we cannot achieve genuine intimacy with more than a handful of people in our lifetime. The practicality of such a model will not be widespread as here we are unable to connect with people and ideas that are alien to what we think and who we are. In the words of the author, ‘The therapeutic model basically exploits our fear of otherness by reducing community to whatever can take familial or friendly form.’

The next, civic model is one with a range of relationships between strangers that mutually respect a common space and common goals without the necessity of a personal relationship. Here, members learn to cooperate and work with one another to solve problems. As Palmer puts it, ‘The community envisioned here is one of public mutuality rather than personal vulnerability, where people may not learn what is in each other’s hearts but understand that if they do not hang together, they will hang separately’. But the efficacy of this model is also questionable. While it has features vital to teaching and learning, it also contains subtle threats to the core mission. In the civic model, like in a democratic society, the rule of majority takes precedence. And when it comes to education, truth by majority rule is not necessarily the truth. To explain using an example, the discovery of earth’s gravitational force or it being round did not come about through the majority rule. In fact, had it been for the majority rule, we might have still believed otherwise.

In the third, i.e. the marketing model, education is treated as a commodity, something that the bill paying students and parents consume. This model has a very straightforward norm – educational institutions must improve their product by strengthening relations with customers and becoming more accountable to them. The consumers are given ample opportunity to criticize their purchase. These criticisms are then passed on to the educators who ‘produce’, in order to help them change their ways and satisfy more and more customers. The reason such a model will fail is simply because a loveless enterprise will turn out to be pathological and if anything hinder true development. It is hard to imagine a healthy school that lacks any trace of love for learning or for learners.

The above three models of community contain different insights that education needs. But neither of them are comprehensive or complete in themselves. What we need to bear in mind is the core of education - knowing, teaching and learning are not mutually exclusive but mutually exhaustive. They are also interdependent, like a web of relations sewn together. How beautiful the final product comes out, is for us to work upon. Parker’s ultimate goal, is to build a model that enhances the knowing, learning and teaching experience in its rightful manner and is also practically applicable. He calls such a model, the community of truth – a space where truth seekers and truth givers come together.

To understand what he means by ‘truth’, let us understand all that is ‘not the truth’. Palmer suggests whatever we think we know, whatever knowledge or facts we are acquainted with today, we cannot, without an iota of doubt, claim it to be the complete and ultimate reality of things; i.e. to say the possibility of it being proven a fallacy in the next few or maybe few hundred years will always exist. Thus the only truth that exists in the field of knowledge is that it is ever evolving. In the words of Palmer, ‘truth is an eternal conversation, a passionate and disciplined process of inquiry, a dynamic dialogue that keeps testing old conclusions and coming to new ones.’

Thus the community of truth, will be a space where there are no pristine objects of knowledge and no ultimate authority. It is a space where education is more than mere delivering of propositions about objects to passive audiences. Knowing in the community of truth is simply being aware of and understanding that our knowledge is limited to the current conclusions, which is not to be claimed as the ultimate truth but is only useful to initiate a conversation that would put it to test and scrutiny again and again by the community. And for such a model to come alive, the subject and not the teacher or student is to be made the center of attention. The subject which Palmer also refers to as ‘Great Things’, should be treated as a living being, may be understood as fire around which the knowers and the seekers gather to exchange and test their knowledge, ideas, learning, observations and interpretations. The subject here is not just a dead collection of facts or theories. It is an active agent – living and breathing, that participates in the dialect of knowing; available for a relationship with its seekers. In such a model, advances of knowledge come around through conflict, and not competition – a zero sum game played merely for private gain. Conflict on the other hand is dynamic, it tests ideas in the open, to make better sense of it to the world. As Robert Frost said “We dance round in a ring and suppose, But the Secret sits in the middle and knows.”

So after knowing that nothing we know is the truth, how do we possibly engage in teaching in a community of truth? As Palmer says, “Our knowledge of the world comes from gathering around great things in a complex and interactive community of truth. But good teachers do more than deliver the news from that community to their students. Good teachers replicate the process of knowing by engaging students in the dynamics of the community of truth.”

 Teaching in community of truth is again based on the premise that the subject should be the point of focus. It does not, as Palmer puts it, assume that teacher has all the knowledge and students have none, that teachers must give and students must take, that teacher sets standards and students have to measure up to it. In such a setup, a third thing, the subject holds both the teacher and the student together, alike accountable for what they do and what they say. Here the students and teachers work together to learn, with no power binaries present. Here, the passion for subject, propels the subject, not the teacher. So then why do we need a teacher? The teacher here is a facilitator, in many cases even a co – leaner who honors the most vital needs of students – to be introduced to a world larger than their own experiences and egos, a world that expands their personal boundaries and enlarges their sense of community.

In other words, the role of a teacher is to provide students an environment where firstly there is a sense of connect and love, with each other and with the subject, secondly there are no power dynamics of being right or wrong. Under this paradigm, a teacher-mistake in class is not a moment of embarrassment, but an opportunity to admit shortcomings and engage in good teaching. The ultimate goal is to develop in children the understanding of the fundamental functioning of your subject while you bring them up to date about the current know hows; in turn shaping their thought process and enabling them to think beyond the already known facts. But this isn’t as easy. We often overdo the delivery of data and facts.

What we need to take care is we spend less time filling their minds with data and our own thoughts and more time opening a space where they can interact with the subject, with us and with each other. What we need to do is not ‘cover the field’ but create a community which has the appropriate balance of ‘stuff’ that must be learnt and ‘space’ that learning requires. So to say, the knowledge of necessary stuff be given in a condensed manner so that their brains resemble a pen drive – high storage capacity with higher synthesis speed and not like a floppy disk with just minimal storage space and lesser efficiency. And this will need intense and intricate classroom planning; everything from conceptualizing the course of study to selecting materials, framing assignments and exercises, and blocking out time for the understanding to settle, needs to be pr- planned. Sadly, there is no fixed formula or teaching technique to it. But what is fixed, is the bottom line - to develop a sound foundation for further study in a way that it ignites and not dissuades or kills their love for the subject or learning altogether. This is what Palmer calls ‘Teaching from the Microcosm’.

Moving on to the last topic, i.e. Learning in Community.

“The best thing for being sad, replied Merlyn, is to learn something. That is the only thing that never fails.” – T. H. White (From the once and future king)

So what kind of learning does Palmer refer to in ‘Learning in Community’? What he means is ‘learning the art of teaching’. While talking about knowing and teaching in community, we made our subject, the center of attention. For learning in community, we have to make ‘the art of teaching’ our subject and thus the focus of our attention. How often do we, as a community of teachers, discuss or converse with each other about the challenges and problems we face behind the close doors of our classrooms? We might seldom talk about ‘teaching techniques’ that we think we excel at but have we ever confided in a fellow colleague about our fears or a disastrous teaching incident?

We, unlike other professionals (such as surgeons or lawyers) work solo behind closed doors, with no colleagues’ as audiences, and almost negligibly come together as a community, to talk about not what should be, but what is - about our low days, our mistakes, our apprehensions, how we faulted or what makes us feel vulnerable, without the fear of being mocked or judged or laughed at. What we should not forget is, we are all rowing in the same boat, we would or will all have similar experiences. So why not keep our egos and our desire to compete and win under check and come together honestly with the ultimate motive of learning and teaching the true art of teaching. Why not open up new topics of conversation, beyond the traditional pedagogical methods and techniques and bare our inner terrain, trust and be trusted, listen and be heard to, be nice and humble, learn and be taught.

And how are we to put this into practice? Such communities do not emerge spontaneously. What they need is a leader. Someone who can streamline the process of providing this ‘safe place’, a place where teachers gather around ‘good teaching’ as their subject of common interest, something they would like to explore and pursue passionately. In the words of Palmer, ‘Such a community is not easily achieved in academic life, given all that divides us. It is most likely to happen when leaders call us back to the heart of teaching and learning, to the work we share and to share the passion behind that work. If we who lead and we who teach would take counsel to heart, everyone in education, administrators, teachers and students alike, would have a chance at healing our disconnections. Learning – learning together – is the thing for all of us.

To conclude, I would agree with Palmer that in a right model of education, neither the teacher nor the students should obtain supremacy. In fact all attempts to establish supremacy, is what is costing us reverence for one another. What should be held superior is the beauty of the subject we seek to learn. Moreover, great teachers are people who bring to life things that their students have never heard of, those who invigorate connections between their subject, their students and their own souls to help students and their own selves become whole. What teachers could be being supreme facilitators, who make the secret i.e. their subject the focal point and participate (not simply aim to drive) the entire process of passionate and soulful knowing, teaching and learning. 

In my next article, I would wrap up the book and talk about its last chapter – ‘Divided no more - Teaching from a Heart of Hope.’