Tag Archives: knowing

“Knowing is Loving”: Part 2

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knowledgepuffeth

Continuing from my previous post . . .

My whole approach to education as a student all the way through graduate school (and, if I’m honest, the first few years of my teaching career) was to collect (disperse) knowledge so that I (my students) could “coerce the world into meeting my (their) needs.”

As it turned out, I lacked a deep understanding of what my needs really were, “to known as I am known.”  This uncharitable pursuit of knowledge eventually led to the death of my spirit.  Mercifully, God saw fit to redeem me from that pit, but I would prefer that my students not require that type of epistemological journey to land them back on the path of flourishing that God intends for them.

But this brings up the question of how much of my students’ path toward flourishing is really up to me (and I ask the same thing for my own two children).  In my feeble attempts to teach them how to love and to know lovingly, I often tend to rely too much on my own efforts and influence.  In other words, I’m just trying to control another outcome.

It is at this point that my faith in God’s providence for my students must provide a hope that surpasses what I can muster by my own efforts.

And, ultimately, it is at this point that I need to stop “conveying knowledge” and start loving.

“Knowledge puffs up, but love builds up.  Anyone who claims to know something does not yet have the necessary knowledge; but anyone who loves God is known by him.”
– 1 Corinthians 8: 1b-3

“Knowing is Loving”: Part 1

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adamandeve1

In his book To Know as We are Known, Education as a Spiritual Journey, Parker Palmer takes some time in his first chapters to discuss the (d)evolution of the image and purpose of knowledge.  To paraphrase, Palmer posits that in premodern times, knowledge was approached lovingly, reverently, and for the purposes of drawing the knower into a deeper communion with the known, that “hidden wholeness” of creation that Merton speaks about.  Modern images of knowledge, however, suggest that we value knowledge only to the extent that it allows the knower to control, to manipulate, and to lay claim on the known.  In other words, “we value knowledge that allows us to coerce the world into meeting our needs–no matter how much violence we must do.”  Palmer cites the invention of the first atom bomb as an extreme example of this “violence.”

Palmer then connects this denatured image of knowledge to the story of Adam and Eve:

“In the language of religious tradition, Adam and Eve committed the first sin.  In the language of intellectual tradition, they made the first epistemological error.  [. . . ] The sin, the error, is not our hunger for knowledge [. . . , rather] Adam and Eve were driven from the garden because of the kind of knowledge they reached for–a knowledge that distrusted and excluded God.  Their desire to know arose not from love but from curiosity and control, from the desire to possess powers belonging to God alone.  They failed to honor the fact that God knew them first, knew them in their limits as well as their potentials.  In their refusal to know as they were known, they reached for a kind of knowledge that always leads to death.”

I was immediately convicted by this discussion.  As the teacher, “the mediator between the knower and the known, the living link in the epistemological chain,” I repeat this original sin in my classroom whenever I present knowledge as something to “master” or “possess” or “control” rather than something to love for the sake of bringing my students into closer communion with the Lover.

Even in classical Christian education, we talk about “teaching for mastery” and “mastery learning.”  I tell my students every day that they need to “master” this or that.  Sure, I also explicitly lead them in discussions and exercises for the express purpose of cultivating in them a love for math and God’s creation as explored through the sciences, but at the end of the day they are assessed and evaluated (“told their value”) based on what concepts and skills they have mastered.  Is there something out of joint here?

Perhaps instead of telling students that I expect them to master the factoring of polynomials, I should say that I expect them to enter a state of loving communion with polynomials.  This sounds kind of ridiculous, but is it not what Palmer is getting at?  Palmer, Jamie Smith, and a host of others – not to mention our own experience in the classroom, whether as teachers or students – tell us that students are significantly formed by the “hidden curriculum”  in our schools as much if not more as by what we explicitly teach.  If this is indeed the case, then the words we choose to describe the “act of knowing” should really matter.

“Do Your Math!”

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spiral

Many students “don’t like” math because they “can’t do” math.  Many students “can’t do” math because math has only ever been presented to them as something “to do.”  Rarely is math presented as something “to understand,” even less often something “to contemplate,” and hardly ever something “to love.”

Why is that?  We know why.  Math is the lowest hanging fruit (science is a close second) for the “practical” utilitarian agendas of modern education reformers nationwide.

Math tutors everywhere make money hand over foot showing kids how to use shortcuts so that they can “do math.”  “Don’t worry about understanding this concept, just learn the trick!”  Besides, parents aren’t going to pay a tutor to help their child love math; the expected return on their investment is quite simply a solid “A” in the class.

Or a high score on the SAT (don’t get me started).

So we’re left with students (and I was one of them!) who can find the area of a circle, but can tell you nothing about Pi except that it can be approximated as 3.14.

Big deal, you say.  Does a carpenter need to understand the elegant beauty of the design of a screw if he can use screws effectively and efficiently to build a beautiful house?

Maybe not.

But if we decide that math is for doing, not for knowing (much less for loving), then we are withholding beauty and truth (and, in my opinion, a piece of God’s glory) from our students.  In other words, we’re cursing them.  And math class will end up being a complete waste of time for all the students who don’t become engineers or accountants.

But no, you say.  For those non-accountants and non-engineers math still teaches them to think logically!  True.  But if that’s the only use of math for those students, we might as well let them drop math and add more Latin classes.  Oh wait; we can’t do that, can we?  I forgot about those darned SATs!!

I have some students who can “do math” better than others.  That will always be a reality.  But you know what else I’ve discovered?  When I walk my students through the exercise of creating the spiral of a nautilus shell by starting with the Fibonacci Sequence, the biggest smiles of pure delight (without fail, almost every time) appear on the faces of those students who are not as good at “doing math.”

I find this fascinating, if not sad (for those students who would rather get back to the business of doing math).

The ability to do math is a useful skill that will prepare our students for the marketplace.  The ability to know and love the divine beauty in math will further conform our students into God’s image.

My encouragement to math teachers (myself included!): Make math a conversation (it is a language, after all).  Insist on understanding, on knowing.  Invite contemplation.  Reveal beauty.  Model curiosity and wonder.  Then, and only then, do math.

You may end up covering less, but you will uncover even more.