A Teacher’s Sin
Teachers’ mistakes are none the less dangerous than doctors’ mistakes. Though they are not so visible. Platitude, truism, clichés. Uttering which we do not often think of the key aspect – the teacher’s right to teach. Because there is a mistake and there is a mistake. Somebody can make one mistake when working for a good cause. Somebody must never get the right to teach because of their personal inconsistence. And sometimes the very system of education (secular and spiritual) turns teaching into a farce.
So, the definition like “a teacher’s sin” has the right to life. The sin consists in doing damage to a person instead of doing them good when trying to teach them by words or deeds. I mean here not so much professional teaching in an educational establishment but rather everyday relations – with children, family members, friends and employees.
When can this sin be committed? In my humble opinion (including the one of a third-generation teacher of a tertiary educational establishment), it can happen in the following situations, first of all:
1. The teacher instructs a pupil who is on an absolutely different level of development, and the latter is made to suffer. There is a parable about an eagle who decided to tell a cock about beauties of the earth with a bird’s eye view. The cock did not understand, the eagle was surprised, and nothing changed in their lives. There is no teacher’s sin here, there is a waste of time. But a teacher’s sin would be committed if the cock started to dream of flying and was not able to either achieve the aim (for example, to see the earth out of an airplane’s window) or to forget this dream.
2. The teacher instructs a pupil without asking for the latter’s permission. Actually, the very lack of motivation to study is the key reason of pupils’ academic failure. The one who does not understand the value of knowledge will not make any significant efforts to gain it.
3. The teacher cannot instruct because he/she does not have either the necessary level of intellectual development or any life experience. Unfortunately, this kind of sin is encountered pretty often because our social order has laid the economic and social groundwork for it. Philologists using slang in comprehensive schools, green post-graduate students delivering lectures to green undergraduates – these are just brushstrokes in the general apocalyptic picture.
So who, how and by whom can knowledge be imparted in view of the foregoing?
First, only to those who are eager for it. Confucius said, “Teachers open the door ... you enter by yourself.”
Second, those who are ready to acquire knowledge. That is, they are ready to pay not just money but time, effort and mental energy for it.
Third, only by the paramount Teacher who knows life existentially, not by hearsay. Who has sorted him/herself out while moving along the uneasy way of self-understanding. Because “if you do not understand yourself, how can you reason about anything and teach others” (Seraphim of Sarov).
Only in this case the teacher will impart knowledge as an inspiration and the pupil will gain it as an emotion.
#sapienti sat
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Tags: Business education; Distance learning; Education; Self-education; Society