Charitable Teaching (1)

"Now it is true that some people will immediately say that the teacher who takes her job seriously enough to actually teach (meaning, usually, to lecture) is the teacher who treats her students with real charity; while other people will equally quickly insist that only a decentralized classroom in which students assume full accountability for their own education is truly charitably.  And maybe some will say that real charity is practiced by those in the middle, those who take lessons from both camps.  We should no listen to any of those people.  They are too quick.  They assume,  and such assumption is problematic, not just because it smacks of self-justification but also because we cannot take it for granted that the models of teaching most consistent with Christian charity are already on the table.  How radical are the demands of Christian love!  The person who loves most deeply lays down her life for her friends; the loving person blesses those  who spitefully use him.  Is it  likely that practices consistent with these demands are built into the already available structures of teaching and learning?  No, to seek charity--to seek to become a charitable person--is to open oneself to almost anything. Perhaps everything e think we know is wrong.  In the end, nothing may remain of our familiar habits, our favorite strategies.  Then again, perhaps all that we do will remain, but renewed, even transfigured.  Who can say?  If we wish to be open to the mandate of charity, if we are willing to rethink what we habitually do in the classroom in hopes of practicing Christian love toward our students, where do we begin?"

Alan Jacobs, "On Charitable Teaching"