Why Teach?

The Urantia Book tells us: The entire universe is one vast school [412:2]. When I contemplate an artist's depiction of the master universe, I think to myself, "What a great campus! I can't wait to go to that school!"

But of course we are already enrolled in that school and attending regularly. We look forward to a long career of being a student in that school. What we forget sometimes, however, is that we also have a long career of being the faculty in that school. The universe plan, God's will for us, is to learn and then to turn around and teach what we have learned (279:13). We have a long universe career of being teachers as well as students. I think we need to begin to train for that career in this lifetime.

I know that some of you are anxious to take on the mantle of teacher, that you are ready to begin, but others are sitting there, gripping the armrests of the chair, thinking, "Who me? I'm not a teacher and I'd rather wait to begin that career. After all, this is the only existence where I can use time as a means of avoidance (551:3)!"

But all of us have many opportunities to teach, even if we are not formal classroom teachers. Most of us are or will be parents-and we know that that is very much a teaching-and learning-experience! Most of us have other opportunities with friends, co-workers, employees, etc., where we may be asked to teach something. We can begin to train for our universe career of teaching right here in this life.

But I know some people will object. They will claim that their universe career will be about teaching spiritual truths-and that is something entirely different from teaching a child to tie his shoe or teaching a co-worker to use a computer program.
But we learn in The Urantia Book that there is no sudden divide between the spiritual and the mundane world. One of the purposes of education, as indicated on page 806:1, is the acquirement of skill-the skill necessary to navigate the world in the form one possesses, whether it is physical, morontial, or spiritual.

People often think of Jesus as the master religious teacher-and certainly he was that. But The Urantia Book reveals that Jesus' teaching career was not limited to religious/spiritual matters. He was, in fact, a master teacher in general. He spent his entire life teaching-not just the last 3 years. He taught his brothers and sisters how to read and write; he taught his brothers carpentry and how to run a household; he taught Ganid many things on the road to Rome, including some facts about the natural world; he apparently taught his apostles how to fish better; and he taught Zebedee how to build better boats.

Sometimes we as religionists want to divide the world into two parts: the spiritual and the mundane or practical. As religionists we somehow value the spiritual above the practical. Most of us have probably thought about Jesus as the master Religious teacher-but in actuality there is no dividing point between the two. Education is about learning how to navigate as the being you are. We exist in a physical world that needs to be explored and mastered; we also have a spiritual side that needs to be recognized and nurtured. They are both parts of being human. As we read The Urantia Book we can learn how to teach anything-because all knowledge is one.

I have been a teacher for 18 years, mostly teaching college students how to write, but also teaching public speaking, business, and remedial math. About halfway through my teaching career I began to read The Urantia Book, and in it, I discovered much good advice about teaching, advice that I had already struggled to figure out from my own experience. I have come to see through my experience with teaching an underlying principle of teaching that is affirmed by Jesus in The Urantia Book. It is a principle that seems sometimes to be lost in the politics, economics, and industry of teaching.

The underlying principle is this: Teaching is about something that happens between persons. At the heart of teaching is a relationship between teacher and student; it is a meeting of minds.

Now I want to be clear that teaching and learning are two different things. People learn in all situations; they learn without teachers, and they sometimes learn in spite of the teacher. Sometimes what they learn has nothing to do with what the teacher is attempting to teach. But teaching introduces another person into the learning process. And that relationship is important. According to The Urantia Book, relationships are ends in themselves (1228:3). The ascension career involves not only an infinite number of learning experiences, but also an infinite number of teaching relationships.

And so we can look to Jesus as the master teacher to show us how to implement this concept of relationship in teaching.
What makes Jesus the master teacher? Well, he was God - that has to help. But we too have God within us, a God who wants to teach us, to be in relationship with us, and to teach through us - and we can call on that God to help us.
With the theme of teaching as a relationship between student and teacher - and with the guidance of the God Within and the Spirit of Truth, let us examine Jesus' life. We can glean six teaching techniques from Jesus as the Master Teacher.

1. Prepare Thoroughly

Teachers need to prepare for their career in two ways. First they need to be sure that they can really do what they are attempting to teach, that they really know the material. Most teachers of practical matters are usually competent in their skills, but I sometimes wonder about people who undertake spiritual teaching. I have met some people who have read two papers in The Urantia Book and then they attempt to go out and teach it. I think we should all be sure we have a thorough understanding before we try to teach something.
The second way all teachers need to prepare is to find out about human beings. We are told on page1363:1 that Jesus' real education was learning how people lived. He had a real interest in complete strangers-and he learned about human beings from all over the planet. And this knowledge prepared him to deal with all different kinds of beings. On page 1431:1, Jesus tells Ganid: "To become acquainted with one's brothers and sisters, to know their problems and to learn to love them, is the supreme experience of living." And this is a key to his success as a teacher.

I recently read a book about college teachers. For the most part, college teachers don't get any training in teaching-they just study their field. One of the biggest problems that they experience is that they simply don't understand why their students don't understand. Usually teachers are people who found school fairly easy-they understood it-but they have never stopped to question why their fellow students struggled. Traditionally, teachers teach the way that they were taught-and they never consider how a person might genuinely not understand their supposedly brilliant lectures. A math teacher may give what he considers a brilliant explanation of the quadratic equation, only to turn around and see a sea of confused faces. The math teacher simply can't understand what went wrong with his lecture. Most teachers-indeed most people-would benefit from learning more about human beings and how their minds work, and how they live, and how they see the world. That's why Jesus took so much interest in other people.

And this is true if you are teaching people about The Urantia Book or about some practical activity. You must understand how they view the universe, what their experience has been, and why they are resistant to the truth.

Any of these teaching techniques of Jesus can be distorted by overusing them. In the case of preparing thoroughly, one may spend so much time in preparing that one may never begin to apply what one knows. Or, on the other hand, the prospective teacher may become addicted to learning so much about other people that he/she never applies this knowledge.

2. Use Teaching Tales and Metaphors

We all know that Jesus used a form of teaching tale called the parable. He took everyday experiences of his students and turned them into a story that demonstrated or revealed a spiritual lesson. His knowledge of people was a good foundation for this technique because he was able to use an everyday experience that was familiar to his students.

The parable is a form of what I call "teaching tales" or "metaphors." Loosely defined, a metaphor is using a familiar image or model to explain a more complex concept. This technique can be used to explain a concept of social interaction, religious truth, or physical law. Cultures all over the world have used metaphors, teaching tales, to pass on knowledge. We call them fables, myths, fairy tales, folk tales, poetry. But metaphors also include scientific models and theories. And they are a very effective way to transmit concepts. For example, understanding how an electrical current works-something that is unseen-can be likened to water running through a hose, with pressure and volume and power. The nervous system of the body can be envisioned as the electrical system of a house.

But Jesus also recognized that teaching tales, metaphors, can be taken too far. In Paper 151 he warns his apostles not to over-interpret his parable, that doing so would lead to confusion and misunderstanding. And this is true in general when we as teachers use metaphors. One of the biggest mistakes in using a metaphor is to confuse the model with the reality. For example, the metaphor of electrical current as water in a hose has its limitations. If you try to find a short in your electric fence by looking for a leak as if it were a water hose, you will never find the problem-because electricity is electricity, not water. Another example from physics (and please remember that I'm an English teacher, and so I am no great authority on physics): In order to understand what light is, physicists first employed the metaphor of light as a wave. And this theory worked pretty well and explained some of the things that they discovered about light. But it also made some of the things that light does totally inexplicable. And so finally physicists had to come up with a totally different metaphor: light comes in little packages, called photons. And this new metaphor helped explained other characteristics of light. We ask ourselves, how can light be both a wave and little packages? And the answer is: light is light. Our theory, our metaphor, is only a means of understanding it, but it does not describe it. To confuse the metaphor with the reality is to ultimately miss the point the metaphor.

So as teachers we should use teaching tales, metaphors, but recognize their limitations.

3. Learn by Doing

Jesus taught his family and his apostles by giving them the opportunity to do things. He taught his brother James how to run a household by training him and then finally just letting him do it. He taught the apostles, and then made them go out and teach. When they had difficulty with John the Baptist's apostles, Jesus didn't lecture them for long hours on how to solve problems, nor did he try to intervene himself. He gave them the opportunity to figure it out for themselves. And he did not hover over them.

Similarly we see Jesus as always doing something. He himself learned to teach by teaching. He prepared for his teaching career by making use of every opportunity that life handed him, including teaching in the temple, teaching his brothers and sisters, teaching Ganid. I myself never understood English grammar, although I was good at it, until I tried to explain it to my students.

The Urantia Book further emphasizes this technique of learning by doing by describing how students are taught in the universe schools: All the way in to Paradise the ascending pilgrims pursue their studies in the practical schools of applied knowledge--actual training in really doing the things they are being taught. The universe educational system sponsored by the Melchizedeks is practical, progressive, meaningful, and experiential. It embraces training in things material, intellectual, morontial, and spiritual. [394:5]

From my own experience as a teacher, I have found that the only way to teach writing is to have students write. They learn to give speeches by giving speeches. And they learn about business or the stock market by attempting to run a business or by buying stocks. The use of a real problem to solve requires that students actually think about the facts they have learned and apply them. They remember the facts in the context of the problem they resolved instead of learning them only to pass a test.

Like the other approaches, learning by doing can be distorted and overused. For instance, some teachers don't provide their students with a foundation. Their attitude is that the students will figure it all out themselves or that they can look it up in a book. Other teachers make the project too difficult so that students just get frustrated. Take the example of Jesus: After teaching his apostles for several months, he then sent them out in twos to do personal teaching for two weeks. Then they regrouped for a while, he taught them more, and then they did a trial teaching tour. Only after the apostles had gained experience at these smaller tasks, did Jesus send them to Jerusalem.

4. Use the Positive Approach.

In several places we see that Jesus encouraged the positive approach to teaching:
By the beginning of this year Jesus had fully won his mother to the acceptance of his methods of child training--the positive injunction to do good in the place of the older Jewish method of forbidding to do evil. In his home and throughout his public-teaching career Jesus invariably employed the positive form of exhortation. Always and everywhere did he say, "You shall do this--you ought to do that." Never did he employ the negative mode of teaching derived from the ancient taboos. He refrained from placing emphasis on evil by forbidding it, while he exalted the good by commanding its performance. [1401:2]

Later he tells his apostles not to try to teach someone by pointing out what is wrong with his/her ideas (1592:4). All of us know the rightness of the positive approach because we have all been wounded at one time or another by a teacher who has castigated us for making mistakes, called us a dummy, pointed out so many errors that we began to think we could do nothing right. And yet, many of us still feel that we can teach someone something by pointing out all the errors. Perhaps parents are the most guilty of using the negative approach with their children.

I know from teaching people to write that many of them have been wounded by their earlier teachers. Students complained to me of teachers that covered their papers with so many red marks and corrections that the student didn't even bother to look at them. The students were just embarrassed and frustrated.

I've found that it's best to comment on what is good in the paper, and try to build from there. Instead of saying, "Your point is so unclear that this paper is meaningless. Your grade is an F," I say, "This is an interesting idea, but I'm not sure I understand it. Can you give me an example?" Then students begin to see that maybe the teacher is their friend, someone who is trying to help them learn, instead of someone who is just trying to prove how smart she herself is.

This positive technique can also be overdone, and in modern American society, I have seen it overdone often. We have come to consider that the self-esteem of a child is so fragile that everything must be praised. We are afraid to offer corrective advice lest the child realize that he has made a mistake. The child becomes addicted to praise and thinks that every small action on his part is worthy of praise. Using the positive approach is not the same as praising everything. Self-esteem grows in person who realizes she is truly competent at a valued skill. A person who is addicted to praise never feels genuinely competent.

next column>

5. Use a Personal One-on-one Approach.

It's sort of a surprise when we read The Urantia Book and discover that Jesus rarely taught the multitudes. Once he had trained his apostles, they did the preaching-even so, only a few of them were very good at preaching. The work of the master was accomplished principally through personal, one-on-one work, e.g., the preparing of the teachers in Rome (1455:4-1456:6). And he chose only 12 apostles to begin his work (I often wonder if this fact maybe tells us something about optimal class size).

I've found the one-on-one approach very effective in my own career as a teacher of writing. Like most other subjects, writing is traditionally taught by standing up in front of the classroom and expounding on the good writing of certain authors-certain techniques to use, things to avoid. Then students are expected to write a paper; the paper is graded and returned-and it's all very impersonal.

But I discovered that, not being a long-winded person, I couldn't fill my class hours with talking about writing. I believe that one learns writing by writing (that learning-by-doing thing). But just having them write for hours is not very productive either. So I added another dimension to this process: the students and I meet one-on-one over their papers and talk about it. This technique completely changes the process. It becomes obvious to them how a reader-a real live person-reacts to their writing. Sometimes if I don't understand what they are trying to say, we can just talk about it. And then I can say, "write down what you just said." Students understand the ins and outs of grammar a lot better if it is applied to the mistakes that they make-not some artificial sample errors. They remember the rule of whether to use "I" or "me" much better when shown on their own paper.

This personal technique works in teaching math, in teaching electricity, in teaching just about anything. People understand concepts better when they are applied to a problem they are working on.

I know a lot of teachers say, "I just don't have the time to do this with all my students. I have too many students; I have too much material to cover." In response my question is, first to the system that assigns so many students to a teacher, what good is it to strive for efficiency if students don't really master material? And to those teachers who think they have so much material to cover: what good is it to cover more material if students don't master the basics?

And again, as far as religious teaching may apply: Why try to tell people all about the Lucifer rebellion or the mansion worlds, when what they personally need is simply encouragement that God loves them as individual children?

Once again, however, personal one-on-one teaching can be overdone. Many concepts can be taught to a group, with a personal follow-up with each student. A teacher has to use time efficiently and simply can't repeatedly teach the same concepts individually to each student. The personal one-on-one approach is designed to help students apply the material to their own experience.

6. Reveal Your Human Side

One of the great gifts we have in The Urantia Book is the portrait that emerges of Jesus as a real human being. We see his life struggles and get a glimpse of the conflicts that he faced, which all of us also face. And thus he doesn't seem like an unapproachable God who led a perfect life simply because he had the advantage of being God. He seems like a real human being, a person who struggled as we do.

This revealing of the human side is an important component of the teaching relationship. Sometimes teachers come across as haughty, arrogant, always right. We begin to wonder if they are human at all, and we question whether we ourselves can attain their level.
I'm currently studying for a doctoral degree. I had thought about pursuing my Ph.D. for a long time because I enjoy going to school and I'm good at reading and writing. The study part did not scare me. What did scare me was that at the doctoral level I would have to work closely with my advisor-and I was afraid of this relationship. I had a bad attitude about people in the academic profession. My experience had been that they were arrogant, haughty, always right. I wasn't sure that I wanted to enter a close working relationship with them.

When I was accepted at graduate school, I was excited about the person who was going to be my advisor. She is well known in her field, her doctorate is from an ivy league college, and she is an associate dean in the college. I knew that I could learn a lot from her. But I was really concerned about the relationship. Next to her, I felt like a rough Galilean woman: 18 years of teaching at a tiny technical college is not exactly prestigious. I live on a farm, where I start my day in coveralls and knee-high rubber boots. I've milked goats and sheared sheep. I was really concerned that we would not find much in common.

But the relationship has gone well. I'm not going to pretend that we're great buddies or anything, but my advisor has let me see her human side. She is a good teacher, and she has revealed to me enough of her personal conflicts that I can see that she too is a person who struggles. And that encourages me. If she can struggle and continue, then maybe I can too.

This is a teaching technique we often feel is somehow inappropriate because after all, as teachers we think we have to be infallible. But just the opposite is true. People, our children, our students, our employees, will learn more from us if they can see us as people who struggle, who aren't always right or perfect.

In The Urantia Book Jesus gives another gift to us that reveals his humanity. This gift is one that I feel has been distorted and misused by almost all of Christianity-and even misused by us as readers of The Urantia Book. It's an important gift, and so I'm going to digress for a moment.

I'm talking about the Remembrance Supper. I grew up Catholic; and therefore I have experienced a lot of solemn communion services. I have also received communion in other churches and have shared in Remembrance Suppers with fellow readers. Most of these occasions have been very ceremonious, with solemn readings and motions. There is a place for such formality and solemnity-and I don't mean to denigrate these practices.

But I do think that in establishing the Remembrance Supper Jesus meant it for more everyday use. We are told that he specifically tried not to establish a formula for a sacrament. His intention for everyday use is evident in the words that he used. In true English-teacher style, I suggest that we examine the text and look at what the words mean.

When Jesus had thus established the supper of the remembrance, he said to the apostles: "And as often as you do this, do it in remembrance of me." [1943:2]

The first question an English teacher would ask is, What does the word this refer to in the sentence? It is a pronoun without an antecedent.

This could mean, "This solemn offering of unleavened bread and wine among a community of believers." This definition is, of course, the narrow definition that most Christian churches recognize. But this could also mean, "Sharing food with friends," or even more broadly, "Eating." I like these broader definitions. Let's use them in our explication.

Analyzing further, we ask ourselves, how often do we eat or share food with friends? The answer, of course, is very frequently. Our lives are punctuated by eating, from the first day to the last. From the first day when a mother holds a newborn baby to her breast, through all the days of childhood and family life, old age and death, we eat almost every day of our lives. And we celebrate major events by sharing food with people: birthdays, graduations, weddings, even funerals.

So when Jesus tells us that as often as we do this, do it in remembrance of him, maybe he is telling us to do it everyday, several times a day. He goes on to give us more explicit instructions about how to remember him:

. . . And when you do remember me, first look back upon my life in the flesh, recall that I was once with you, and then, by faith, discern that you shall all some time sup with me in the Father's eternal kingdom. [1943:2]

What does Jesus want us to remember about him? He wants us to remember that he is human just like us. He wants us to think about how we are feeling at that moment, and to look through his life for a time that he shared the same feelings. Jesus had a life that had many happy moments with his family and friends. But he also had other feelings. There were days of awkwardness in the family because he had been lost in the temple or because his brother Jude had done some unacceptable thing. There were days when he was tired from working so hard. There was that awful day when the family received word that Joseph had been injured and Jesus had to remain behind with the little children and give them something to eat while he waited with such uncertainty and terror. There were the days he ate with his family, but he was wondering how he could tell Rebecca that he wasn't going to marry her. And there was the night he sat down with the people he loved best and knew that he was going to leave them. He worried about them and he was also heartbroken that one of these whom he loved best had already betrayed him.

When you sit down to eat, everyday, stop and ponder that Jesus, the Creator Son of our universe, sat down at a table just as you are now, and felt the same kinds of feelings that you are feeling right now.

And if you do this, you will begin to experience Jesus as a real human being who struggled just as you struggle. He had the courage to go on, and so can you.

Conclusion

So there we have it: six techniques given to us and demonstrated by the master teacher, Jesus. Of course any of these techniques can be overdone. The whole concept of teaching as a relationship can be overemphasized. The beauty of Jesus' teaching is that he had a balanced approach.

All of these points stand on the same foundation principle: at the heart of teaching is something that happens between student and teaching. It is a relationship between persons; it is a meeting of minds.

So maybe you're beginning to see that you should reconsider what you've been teaching and how you've been teaching. Maybe you're beginning to see that you do have both opportunities and responsibilities to teach-on both the practical and the spiritual planes. But maybe you don't know where to begin; perhaps you think six techniques are too many things to remember. I leave you with one last easy point to remember.

A present day master teacher, an American, Parker Palmer wrote a book called The Courage to Teach. I was surprised when I read this book because many of his concepts about the teaching relationship seem related to those in The Urantia Book. Although he is a university professor, he has taught at many levels, and he directs his book to all teachers from kindergarten to university.

One of the principal points of his book is: you teach who you are. He emphasizes that the lessons people learn from you-intentionally or unintentionally-are about the person you are.

Most of us recognize how true this is. The person that the teacher is impresses us for the positive or the negative. Some of us have developed a lifelong aversion to a subject because of a certain teacher. We decided years ago that we did not want to have anything to do with, for example physics, because one of our physics teachers was a person we didn't want to be anything like.

But teachers can and do have a positive impact. Many of us have chosen a career because we wanted to be like a particular teacher. That teacher seemed like such a rich human being who was living the kind of life we wanted to live, and therefore we chose the same profession. For example, many of my English teachers were interesting people with such insights into human behavior that I wanted to be like them. In addition, the personality of Parker Palmer that comes through in his book has further energized me to extend my teaching career. I have learned from who my teachers are.

And of course, Jesus, the master teacher, taught who he is. Two thousand years ago he told Ganid basically the same thing about teaching, but in a more positive approach. He said:

"If we know God, our real business on earth is so to live as to permit the Father to reveal himself in our lives, and thus will all God-seeking persons see the Father and ask for our help in finding out more about the God who in this manner finds expression in our lives." [1466:2]

In other words: Be what you teach.

It's something we sometimes forget, isn't it? And yet it is so obvious. If we want our kids to grow up to be responsible adults, we have to be responsible adults. If we want our employees to be courteous and efficient with customers-we have to be that way too. I've found that if I want my students to be writers, I have to be a writer too, not just a teacher of writing.

If we want to go out in the world and teach others about the fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man-guess what? We have to be family.

If you don't know where to begin your teaching career, start here, a simple step to remember: Be what you teach.