5 -- The spiritual formation of teachers

Read chapter 7 of To Know as We Are Known. This chapter summarizes the book by suggesting that the real problem in education isn't the system but the condition of the human heart. Dr Palmer says,

Most teachers are well acquaited with the outward forces that defeat personal and communal teaching and learning. We have a long and groaning litany of complaints. Community has broken down in our schools, and competition is the norm. Objectivism reigns supreme, the unquestioned epistemology of most academic disciplines. Our schools and our students are better organized to ward off challenge and change than to open themselves to truth's transformations. Education is the slave of an economic system that wants to master nature, society, and even the human heart to gain profit and power. So teachers who try to create space in which obedience to truth is practiced musy do battle with a host of external enemies.

Given such an analysis, it is tempting to survey some strategies for institutional change. Those strategies can be helpful -- but not until we have done some inner work. For our tendency to blame institutions for our problems is itself a symptom of objectivism. Institutions are projections of what goes on in the human heart. To ignore the inward symptoms of our eductional dilemas is only to objectify the problem -- and thereby multiply it. (p 107)

Dr Palmer uses the rest of the book to unpack the type of "inner work" that teachers need to do themselves to combant what he sees as the enemies of truth. In preparation for our next discussion please write out and email to me ahead of time your reflections on these talking points. Your writing can be as long or as short as you think is appropriate.

1. What does the author think teachers need to do to nurture spiritual formation within themselves? How do these practices relate to some of the other spiritual formation practices we're talked about in other classes?
2. The author is writing primarily for a secular audience. How are these ideas applicable to Christian teachers who see their teaching as a dimension of discipleship?
3. How will Dr Palmer's ideas shape the way that you go about teaching and discipling people? Give an example or two.