Teaching Students Truth

"Piled Higher and Deeper" by Jorge Cham
www.phdcomics.com

I laugh at this comic knowingly, because this is so much the business of English. I ask questions, but rarely do I have pat answer. I ask my students hard questions, and I refuse to take their pat answers.

I'm not going to stop doing this, but all of a sudden I wonder: As a believer, should I not be doing more for my students than simply teaching them to ask questions?

What made me wonder this was a prayer of Henri Nouwen's, a prayer which I encountered at the end of the last chapter in Jen Hatmaker's Seven: 

Dear Lord, you have sent me into this world to preach your word. So often the problems of the world seem so complex and intricate that your word strikes me as embarrassingly simple. Many times I fell tongue-tied in the company of people who are dealing with the world's social and economic problems.

But you, O Lord, said, "Be clever as serpents and innocent as doves." Let me retain innocence and simplicity in the midst of this complex world. I realize that I have to be informed, that I have to study the many aspects of the problems facing the world, and that I have to try to understand as well as possible the dynamics of our contemporary society. But what really counts is that all this information, knowledge, and insight allow me to speak more clearly and unambiguously your truthful word. Do not allow evil powers to seduce me with the complexities of the world's problems, but give me the strength to think clearly, speak freely, and act boldly in your service. Give me the courage to show the dove in a world so full of serpents.

When I first read this prayer, what resonated with me was Nouwen's prayer that he would understand the world. I am convinced that college freshmen, blossoming into adults, need this. My students this summer hadn't heard about the UC Santa Barbara shooting, or the one at Seattle Pacific University. One, years ago, had never heard of the Berlin Wall. Others are baffled when believers, men and women who really want to follow Christ, hold something other than the standard evangelical position on feminism or sexuality, or when they subscribe to amillenialism. The world is indeed complex, and it is important for students to understand it.

But this morning, when I decided to write about this prayer, I noticed something new, something more important. Nouwen does not only pray for knowledge. Nouwen prays for innocence. He prays for simplicity, that when 'the world becomes stranger, the pattern more complicated' he may still serve Christ.

I had entirely forgotten this.

Like the Pharisees, tallying up their mint and dill and cumin but neglecting the weightier matters, I had tallied up how I would challenge students' mental models of the world, push them to ask hard questions, and to ask more questions, but had neglected the weightier matter.

Do I believe in truth? Then it is of utmost importance that I teach my students not only to be serpents but also to be doves, not only to understand the world but also to know the one who holds the world in his hands, and to think, speak and act in His service.

Secular education is very, very good at teaching students to be serpents. I mean this in the best possible sense. I taught for two and half years at a state university, and from it I took some of the readings, the assignments, and the teaching strategies I use to coach students to listen to other people, and learn from them.

But this is where secular education ends, and it is not enough. When I read the news every morning over breakfast, I am (partly) looking for articles to use in class, ones that will help my students do what Nouwen describes: understand the world well. I enjoy reading the news and opinion, but I have, especially lately, detected a kind of echo chamber aura about it. We talk and talk, we push for understanding and push some more, yet ultimately, what do we accomplish? Very little.

In the news, we study the spread of Ebola, identify blame, prescribe cautionary measures the United States could take should a traveler bring the disease here: But people are still dying in Africa. In the news, we study the exile of the Yazini and Christian people from Iraq, and we cry out against their treatment: But they are still exiled. We eulogize Robin Williams, and educate the reading public on the dangers of depression, but he is still dead. Reading the news, there is the sense that the in this world of ours, 'things fall apart, the center cannot hold'.

But we know the one who is the Center, the one who holds us together when all else is falling to pieces. Am I pointing my students back to Him?

More specifically, am I teaching my students to hold fast to God's word even when it doesn't seem to make sense, to fit the story that the world is telling? Am I teaching them to rest their hands in His when the questions become too hard to answer, and to do His work even when the world is falling to pieces about them?

Have I taught my students this? I don't know. Perhaps my students could tell you. But I want to teach my students this.

When I think about how I could teach my students this, I think about the first assignment in English Composition. In a bid to challenge them to understand how complicated the world is, I ask them to read "How to Get More Women (And Men) To Call Themselves Feminists". Very few (if any!) of my students go into the assignment thinking of themselves as feminists. But when they finish, they are more aware of what it means to be feminist, and more importantly, more aware of the problems that women face every day, especially in third-world countries.

But awareness is not enough. The real question is, am I teaching my students to know and speak clearly God's truthful word as they think about this issue? Equally important, am I teaching them to act boldly on what they come to believe about the issue?

This is a complicated question. Exactly what God's true word teaches about masculinity and femininity is something about which people who really love Christ disagree. Moreover, people are perpetually being told to care about something, all real problems crying out for attention: the crisis in Ukraine, mass shootings, slave labour and sweatshops used to produce coffee, chocolate, and clothing, human trafficking, ethical food sourcing, and more. How can I tell my students to care about one more thing, the plight of women around the globe?

Clearly, teaching students to know and act upon God's word does not mean pointing them to some pat answer, nor does it mean spelling out a precise course of action. But what it could mean is this: urging students to study God's word to know what is true, to accept no substitutes for the truth, and teaching them to show compassion to others, to act on their beliefs, rather than believing that awareness is enough.

I want to end with a story: As I think about how what all this might look like in my classroom, I am reminded of one of the best student papers I ever read. A student last fall (we'll call her Kay) wrote a paper on the Singularity. That paper did an excellent job modeling the balance between serpent and dove that Nouwen refers to, and that I want to inspire in my own students.

Kay's paper started with a lengthy discussion of what the Singularity was, when it was coming, and how it would change human society. Clearly Kay, a computer science major, put a lot of effort into understanding the world. She was clever.

But she was also innocent. Kay told me that when she first started the project, she could only research for about an hour before she got so terrified by the news on the Singularity that she had to close her computer and go do something else. Gradually she got better at trusting God with the fate of the human race. This showed in her paper. Written to Christians, not to computer scientists, Kay's paper offered no solutions. It held out no false hope that the Singularity might not occur. All it did was remind readers that in the end, we are always between the paws of the true Aslan. Whatever happens with the rise of artificial intelligence, she wrote, we can keep trusting God.

I didn't teach her that, this balance of cleverness and innocence, of serpent and dove.

But I want to teach it to the next batch of students.

May Nouwen's prayer be mine, for my students: that they understand the world, but retain still their innocence, simplicity, and trust in the one who is True, and loves them.