May 1, 2013

The Most Neglected Reality in Education


I found the following comment by Parker Palmer interesting and unfortunately too often true of biblical and theological studies.

“In conventional education, the classroom is not regarded as a place to ‘practice’ anything. Practice goes on in the world, and the classroom is a place set apart. Practice is what students are being prepared for—it is oriented toward the future. Their preparation consists of absorbing accumulated knowledge—it is oriented to the past. So the realities that concern conventional education are 'out there’ in the world, ‘back there’ in the past, and ‘up there’ in the future. The most neglected reality in education is the reality of the present moment, of what is happening here and now in the classroom itself.”

Parker J. Palmer, To Know as We Are Known / A Spiritualityof Education (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 11983), 88.

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