Responsible ancients had a clear idea about how children learned. There may be only a little difference in their perceptions, and those that comprise effective pedagogy today. Whether something is learned, from the simplest information and practice to the most sophisticated, from a parent, teacher, mentor, an elder, or whomever, the process is similar if it is to achieve learning. One usually learns from the simple to the complex, and does it best when guided through related steps. Once the process is put into practice, the sharper students can move forward in some contexts, knowing that if this and that are true, they can summarize properly, and move on more rapidly. Isaiah referred to the system, as something useful, but only a system. The system is neutral, and may be used to teach fiction as well as truth. Even teachers can miss paradox.
During the years I was engaged in higher education, I grew in the realization that everyone does some teaching perforce, but many do not teach well. They teach something by their personal examples, even if what they teach is false to value. Failure to teach well may be caused by ignorance of the process, a lack of patience to achieve the purpose, and no conviction about the importance of teaching and learning – perhaps loss of moral value to truth. Teaching in any generation includes three important perceptions: 1) -theory; 2) -models; and, 3) -practice. To teach a student to row a boat, some physical principles ought to be recited relating to water pressure, angles of oars, and the like. Then the instructor gets into the boat and demonstrates what he has talked about, perhaps doing it the right way and the wrong way to demonstrate. Then he turns the oars over to the student, who will make some mistakes at the beginning. Some instructors, at this juncture betray their calling by berating students for clumsiness. Learning is partly revealed in new experiences of imperfect performance. Accidents accent human frailty.
Jesus was a teacher. Usually, in our recitations of the events of the early years of the life of Jesus, there is reference to his upbringing, even learning carpentry from Joseph. In the reporting of his adult years, we have nothing of his following the trade of Joseph. We have much of his teaching, and he taught his followers to teach. He had in his teaching, theory (on the nature of mankind as well as God, and the meaning of redemption); in his practice of the theory he taught (that mankind can live righteously and serve others); and, in his patience to maintain interest in application (as observed in his work with the disciples, and urging for them to make disciples of the same legion). It is a marvelous pattern made for parents, for institutions, for societies, for any progress related to mankind. The process has become more informal in modern application, but it holds.
The passage recited above from Isaiah is not accusation against the method, but cast in the context that the people have accented the method over the substance. Although we learn well by the method, it is important that what we learn is substantive and truthful. Follow the method, with certainty of the road to be traveled. The method is not the substance except as a factor of pedagogy. Here is where the Christian educator (and other contexts as well) parts from many humanists who can only find truth in one excellent intellectual system of learning. However, an effective method, tried and successful, makes substantive truth more effectively delivered and believed when it is understood and absorbed in tandem with a comparison/contrast. We discover that the best life we can live is in balance between physical and spiritual. *Mark W. Lee, Sr. — 2016, 2020