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What
is a true educational experience? The Hebrew word
for education- chinuch -gives us a clue.
Chinuch is associated with the Hebrew word
chen , which means "grace". When
you meet people with chen , you realize there
is something very attractive about them. But chen
is not the same as "pretty," which
is yofi in Hebrew.
To
help you appreciate the difference between chen
and yofi , imagine the following scenario.
A friend wants to fix you up with a gorgeous-looking
woman who is nothing less than a model, or so he tells
you. You are excited. You anticipate love at first
sight and wait for days till the date. Finally, the
day arrives and you knock on her door. Someone opens
the door. You're a little shocked.
"Is
your sister home?" you ask.
"I don't have a sister. Who are you looking for?"
she says.
"I'm looking for Debbie."
"I'm Debbie."
"Oh, oh ... I'm David's brother. He couldn't
make it tonight."
Women
can imagine a similar scenario. Your blind date gets
to your door and says, "Ah, Debbie?"
And you look at him and say, "What's it to you?"
"Well, I'm supposed to meet with Debbie."
"Oh ... Debbie ... oh, she had to go out. Something
happened. She couldn't make it."
What
would you do in that situation? (You know what you
would do to your friend who fixed you up.) Of course,
you know that it is not nice to say that you are someone
else, so probably you wouldn't lie. You decide to
go out with the person for, say, ten minutes, not
to hurt his/her feelings. After ten minutes, you figure
you can say, "I'm sorry, I really feel sick.
Something hit me. I gotta go home."
However,
imagine after ten minutes, you will look at the person
and say to yourself, "You know what? I'll give
him another twenty minutes. I don't want to hurt his
feelings. This is not so bad." After another
twenty minutes, you might look at the person and say,
"You know, she's a great conversationalist,"
and another hour goes by. It is possible that after
some time a person who at first glance seems unattractive
could actually become very attractive. If that is
the case then you are actually seeing the person's
chen .
Have
you ever met someone whose face looked so different
from the way his or her face looked after you spent
some time together?
We
have all experienced a face that goes beyond the physical
face-the kind of beauty that emerges through a direct
relation with that person. After six weeks in a new
class, you will look around and see how different
people's faces look. As time goes on and you develop
relationships, faces transform. Some faces that looked
unattractive will look very attractive, and some faces
that looked very attractive might start to look unattractive.
You may find a gorgeous Brad Pitt look-alike at your
door and be ready to spend hours with him. But after
five minutes of conversation he disgusts you; and
suddenly his looks do not attract you.
What
is happening is the difference between chen
and yofi , and it emerges through a relationship.
Yofi is an external beauty. A person could
be a cover girl but could become physically unattractive
to you after just a little time because on the inside
she is really ugly and that becomes manifest on the
outside.
Education
or Indoctrination
You
may be wondering what all of this has to do with chinuch
-education. Chinuch means to draw out
a person's inner beauty, a beauty that is a function
of relationship. It translates into how well you relate
to yourself, your friends, your community, the world,
and the reality beyond all which we call G- d. Through
the relationship and its harmony, an inner beauty
will emerge.
The
word education comes from the Latin word educare
, which means to "draw out." To educate,
therefore, means to draw out something that fundamentally
is already there. In the process of education, you
actually become aware of yourself. You grow, you transform
and become the real you. Rather than simply memorizing
a bunch of information, you absorb ideas that draw
out the inner you and bring you into the world of
relationships. As you discover your own inner beauty
of chen , you discover the chen
of all people from the inter-relatedness we all share.
Indoctrination
is the complete opposite. Indoctrination seeks to
put something into you, while education tries to bring
something out of you.
At
the very early stages of education, we send our children
to kindergarten, gan as it is called in
Hebrew. Kindergarten comes from German and literally
means a children's garden ( gan also means
garden). What kind of name is this for a children's
school? A better name would be kinder- workshop or,
better these days, a kinder-factory. But if education
is likened to a garden, then the educator is really
a spiritual gardener. A gardener interacts with a
seed. If he has a pear seed, then he wants to identify
it is as a pear seed so that it will become a pear
tree. If he has a carrot seed, he will want it to
become a carrot. An educator's job is to create an
environment that feeds you ideas that will nourish
you in a manner in which you will grow and flourish.
An educator only wants you to be who you are.
While
an educator is like a gardener, an indoctrinator is
like a carpenter. A carpenter imposes his vision on
a raw material, while a gardener sets his vision according
to his seed; whatever you are, he wants you to become.
To
indoctrinate is to coerce. It involves imposing the
teacher's values-aspirations, identity and character-on
the student, so that the student will become like
the teacher and reflect the teacher. In the process
of indoctrination, a conflict is liable to arise between
the teacher and the student because the teacher has
a message he wants the student to accept, even at
the expense of the student's unique identity and individuality.
Because the teacher may be physically or mentally
more powerful than the student, he is able to coerce
the student to bend and submit to the teacher's position.
There are teachers who are brilliant in their logic
yet coercive in their brilliance, rather than concerned
with whether the growth is coming from the student.
Conversely, the educational process starts first with
a genuine patient and caring relationship with the
student.
To
educate also is to communicate. Communication is not
simply two people taking turns speaking. It can be
one person listening and the other person speaking.
What's the difference? The word communication is from
the same source as the word community. In an indoctrination
experience, the teacher is imposing himself or herself
on the student.
The
object is to impose the teacher's views in such a
way that they become the student's own view. However,
in an educational experience, the object is to communicate
truth. Therefore, the teacher's message will resonate
from without and from within the student. The message
the student hears is something that she would have
heard from inside had she been open to it or had someone
helped her to be open to it.
When
you hear truth it resonates inside, not just outside.
And there is something inside that tells you that
you knew it all along. To indoctrinate is to impose
, but to educate is to expose what
is inside. The educator is simply sharing truth.
Let
Go and Let G-d
When
the Jewish people were in the desert, they complained
about having no water. Moses, their leader, was a
quite frustrated with dealing with this "the
stiff-necked people." At this, G-d said to Moses,
"Take your staff ... and speak to the rock before
their eyes, that it should give its waters."
(Numbers 20:8)
But
Moses did not speak to the rock; instead, he got angry
with the complaints of the Israelites and he hit the
rock with his staff. The rock then produced water.
The Torah then relates that G-d said to Moses, "Because
you did not believe in Me to sanctify Me in the eyes
of the Children of Israel, therefore you will not
bring this congregation to the Land that I have given
them." (Numbers 20:12) And it happened that Moses
did not enter the land. Moses' mistake was that he
hit the rock when he should have spoken to the rock.
With this act, he did not fully sanctify G-d's name
and thus could not lead the people into the land of
Israel .
How
can we understand his mistake?
The
famed Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook explains that when
an educator is dealing with individuals, he must be
able to teach and direct each of them in a way that
helps them grow and contribute to the whole. Moses
forgot about that in this moment when the complaints
of the Israelites got the better of him. What happened
to Moses, the greatest Jewish leader and educator,
was that in that moment he forgot his role and became
an indoctrinator.
By
losing his temper and hitting the rock, Moses was
drawn into a conflict between himself and the people.
He put himself into a position of me against them.
He betrayed a true educational mindset and angrily
said: "Listen now, you rebels ...!" In such
a set up, one must win and the other must submit.
When Moses lost his temper and gave into a coercive
conflict, he ended his career.
Until
that point, Moses was a true educator. He was able
to speak to the people and articulate the will of
G-d. From Moses, the Jewish people heard G-d's will
from without and it resonated within them, inspiring
them to declare, "We will do and we will listen."
According
to the famous 16th century Torah commentator the Maharal,
when Moses lost his temper he showed that he did not
believe enough in G-d. If Moses, the educator, had
sufficient belief in G-d, he would not have become
frustrated. A true educator does not become frustrated
and lose his cool; and he does not need to get coercive--neither
physically nor emotionally. He calmly shares knowledge
with his students and then he lets go and lets G-d
do the rest.
We
learn how to teach from the good example of Moses-who
comes down in history as Moshe Rabbenu ,
"Moses Our Teacher"-and we learn how not
to teach from his one key mistake.
A
true educator strives to communicate, and when you
learn from such a person, you come to understand the
knowledge that is being communicated to you from without
and from within.
A
true educator, in no way, will impose herself on you
or cause you to lose yourself. Just the opposite,
she will help you discover yourself; empower you to
be who you truly are and express your inner self-
your inner beauty.
Rabbi
David Aaron
Author of Endless Light, Seeing G-d, The Secret Life
of G-d, Inviting G-d In and Living a Joyous
Life |
