I believe that what most teachers want to do is pass on our personal experience and epiphanies to our students. Contrary to what some people think, I do not believe this to be very easy.
Why?
Well, let me tell you a small story about a Christian priest and some men in distress. Or maybe women, what do I know. The priest might also be a woman — it’s really not that important.
I believe using Christianity for my story is important mainly because it is one of the only cultures which it is still permissible to verbally shit upon, which is ironic to me since most people use science as a religion by simply repeating what they hear or read without ever fact-checking. Furthermore, all people hold some kind of belief and dogma — regardless of whether it is religion or something else.
Onwards we go!
It is wartime. A group of bereaved villagers enter their church, seeking comfort and consolidation. Many of them have lost their spouses, children, and are living from hand to mouth. Their distress has started to breed into resentment, which could bode ill both for each individual and for their community.
The priest listens, talks and eventually quotes the Bible with a fitting sentence for these kinds of situations (a sentence I much enjoy even though I am not Christian myself):
“God works in mysterious ways.”
To me, this sentence is a way of saying: Even though everything seems hellish now, now is now and tomorrow might be another day. Life does not revolve around you and these seemingly all consuming problems are simply the symptoms of a world in constant change. We all have ups and downs in our lives and if we act impulsively when in distress, we might come to regret our bitter actions when things turn around for the better.
Here is the issue though: Though the sentence: “God works in mysterious ways” is very fitting for this situation, a priest saying this to a group of people in distress, could very well use that sentence to keep those people in check. The idea that the world does not revolve around you, can easily become an insinuation to keep your head down, shutting up and to stop making trouble.
However, if the priest through conversation makes the villagers come to the realization that “God works in mysterious ways”, the sentence can become an anchor of hope and the belief that good things have yet to come.
The sentence remains the same but how it is received and interpreted might be very different, regardless of the priest’s intentions.
This is a potential issue for all teachers and students though I believe it is something that few teachers or students are aware of: condensing experience into a sentence or story to pass it on rarely conveys the meaning you would want it to.
So what do we learn from this and how do we apply it?
In my eyes that depends on whether you are the teacher or the student
For the teacher
As a teacher I hope you first of all consider that not everything you say gets perceived how you would want it to. This is especially important when having disagreements with students.
You might not be having a discussion about the same thing. Thus, part of being a good teacher demands that you try to convey the same idea in a thousand different ways to see what your student responds best to, rather than to find the “perfect way” of expressing something and beating your students over the head with it, again and again.
For the student
Always remember that your teachers are simply human and they are doing their best to convey years of rich experience with a rather simple medium; words. The words are simply artifacts for the experience. How you receive them is outside your teacher’s sphere of control. This means that it is not always fruitful to keep demanding an elaboration on a concept because in the end, you are the one who has to experience it for yourself. It also means that when your teacher sounds like they are holding you back, they might simply lack a way of transmitting their lesson in a way that sits well with you — so assume they are trying their best.
While these thoughts might seem fairly banal, I hope they will inspire to action, should it help you, rather than simply nodding your head and thinking: This is something I have heard before in one way or another.
Enjoy your conflicts.