I decided to become an educator in a hotel room in Kampala, Uganda, while waiting for my flight back to the U.S. Under mosquito net, I lied on my bed and read this from C.S. Lewis:
“They [educators] see the world around them swayed by emotional propaganda—they have learned from tradition that youth is sentimental—and they conclude that the best thing they can do is to fortify the minds of young people against emotion. My own experience as a teacher tells an opposite tale. For every one pupil who needs to be guarded from a weak excess of sensibility there are three who need to be awakened from the slumber of cold vulgarity. The task of the modern educator is not to cut down jungles but to irrigate deserts.” I quickly had experiences that confirmed Lewis’ words. I wrote in a reflection paper for my teaching license, “I did two observations already this semester, and the numbness of the students struck me. There was no light in their eyes, like someone cut the cord to their power supply.” In their fallen state, my students in the U.S. or the D.R.C. don’t just need to know what is true, but they need to learn how to feel what is true: what courage feels like and when to muster it, that compassion is heavy and it’s good to let it bleed, and even though remorse stings it’s better to embrace it than flee. My life as an educator is an extension of my identity as a disciple-maker, the goal of which is resurrection, stone hearts turning to flesh, learning how to be human. When I was student teaching I had my students read a flash fiction piece about a man’s attempt to save his dying dog after it’s hit by a car. As soon as we finished reading it, a student in the back row lifted his face from the page and exclaimed in outrage, “What the hell? This story is so sad.” When he was awake in my class I really liked this student. He usually played it cool, so this was a break in character for him. I expect he probably had experiences more tragic than those described in the story, but did he know how to feel sorrow over them? After spending two years reading various academics argue over the heart of education, I see plainly my own heart. My goal is not dispensing skills and information to prepare my students for the workforce, or advancing the cause of democracy by preparing them for civic engagement, God willing those are by-products. Like W.E.B. Dubois “I insist that the object of all true education is not to make men carpenters, it is to make carpenters men.” Jesus awakened fishermen from the slumber of cold vulgarity, “And he said to them, ‘Follow me, and I will make you fishers of men.’” |
No matter how hard you throw a dead fish in the water, it still won't swim.
-Congolese saying For as the Father raises the dead and gives them life, so also the Son gives life to whom he will.. -Jesus Wesley & Mindy McKnightThis blog will address critical questions regarding our vision of ministry in the Democratic Republic of Congo. It is meant to last only until we depart the U.S., with each post being 500 words or less. Archives
July 2016
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