Kindle Notes & Highlights
Jesus taught us that when the process of education is complete, the student will have become like his master (Luke 6:40). Ineffective teaching occurs when no student wants that unfortunate result to happen to him.
But an effective teacher doesn’t need to do this because an effective teacher is the kind of person the students want to become like. The driving force behind this impulse is always love. Love for God, love for life, love for the student, and love for the subject.
Love is not a sentiment. Love acts. Love studies. Love gets into it. Love asks for details. Love works through difficulties, and answers tough questions.
Methods change. They come and go. In the ancient world, students would use wax tablets to take notes, and now they use another kind of tablet, one with microchips inside. Methods have to do with things like overhead projectors, chalk boards, white boards, notebook handouts, web sites, film strips, videos, and someone with an ancient Babylonian wagon to deliver the wet clay for the cuneiform tablets. But principles never change.
Calling is not just for “a call to the ministry,” or a “call to the mission field.” Dentists are called, and homemakers are called, and chefs are called, and teachers are called. Our modern terminology about this is appalling. We call ministry, for example, “full time Christian work.” But for the Reformers, every aspect of life was under the Lordship of Christ, which meant that every vocation is full time Christian work. There is no other kind. Teaching math or grammar is full time Christian work.
In the kingdom of God, no authority—including the authority that a teacher needs to have—can be grasped. It is like trying to hold a pint of oil in your right hand, with no container. Seeking to become the servant of all in the context of education is the way to become a very effective teacher. It keeps you out of jealousy feuds, and it means that all your emotional energy can be poured into teaching, right where it belongs.
Suppose a teacher has taught the same course for ten years. An ineffective teacher will have taught the same course. An effective teacher will have reread the texts frequently, and will have noticed new things.
If the choice must be between the warm-hearted teacher who simply gushes appeals, and the coldhearted who stifles all feeling by his icy indifference, give me the former by all odds; but why either? Is there no healthful mean between steam and ice for the water of life?
