| | "To this act of consciousness, the Socratic principle applies: the teacher is only an occasion, whoever he may be, even if he is a god, because I can discover my own untruth only by myself, because only when I discover it is it discovered, not before, even though the whole world knew it.... Between one human being and another, to be of assistance is supreme, but to beget is reserved for the god" (emphasis mine)- Soren Kierkegaard, Philosophical Fragments The relation between teacher and follower (or student) is a subject which has received ample philosophical attention since the beginnings of Western thought, a fact which makes the contemporary state of educational practice, ably described by Tibor, all the more pitiable. That teachers have failed to tap such a rich source of educational wisdom is due, at least in part, to the contemporary state of philosophy, which has abandoned its classical vision- to seek truth- and decided to reduce reason to a mere instrument, whose use is restricted to purely theoretical logical systems and pragmatic calculations. What happened to the wonder of the ancient Greeks, to whom philosophy was a way of life?
I digress. In any case, what is dearly needed in academia is something like a return to the Socratic model of the teacher, articulated so well by Socrates in Plato's Theaetetus. His description of the teacher as a kind of midwife represents, to my mind, nothing less than the ideal of the educational relationship. The initial quote is a nice summary of the Socratic notion (by a philosopher amazing in his own right) of the "teacher." But, of course, I recommend reading the idea laid out in full in Plato's Theaetetus.
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