Sunday, October 05, 2014

Teacher-Student?

A person offers advice to another in some kind of intellectual capacity and takes the teacher position.

I reason the 'teacher' authority should not necessarily be granted. It depends on credibility.

One can listen and learn, but a teacher-student relationship requires expertise by the teacher. Particular expertise likely not possessed by the student. There may be cases when one expert is conferring with another and one teaches another.

Example; my senior colleague at work has two decade plus of successful security experience, much of it in corporate security. I have less than a year of experience in corporate security, therefore I am willing to take the role of student, although I lead in language issues.

If someone simply assumes a teaching role just because 'they are out there' more and have more experience, but are not experienced successfully in the context for which they are advising, that is not sufficient to lead a teacher-student relationship.

That would not make one not accepting the student position, and that one as teacher, ‘not teachable’, one can still learn, but I view the dialogue more of an open dialogue, as opposed to an expert teacher teaching a novice student.

I can, for example teach someone that does not have my experience in my academic disciplines of Philosophical Theology, Philosophy of Religion, and Biblical Studies because I have earned that successfully through twenty years of academic study at a high level. I successfully embedded by own theodicy, a Reformed, Christian remedy and defence for the problem of evil within my PhD thesis. I have dealt with complex issues of compatibilism and incompatibilism, free will and determinism, and read and interacted with difficult authors such as Alvin C. Plantinga, Immanuel Kant and Jonathan Edward.

I continue to teach online and in a Church context.

I should not be accepted as a teacher simply because it is assumed, or because with good motives I wish to assist. Good motives alone do not allow for a reasonable teacher-student context.

In other areas of life where I am proficient, but not expert such as in martial arts, and martial arts weapons, I would not promote myself as a teacher to a person, but might be willing to assist someone if specifically asked.

The issue of expertise is important but not primary in spiritual manners with teachers in the New Testament. From 1 Timothy 3 and Titus 1 there is more importance placed on spiritual character (implied in Christ, guided by the Holy Spirit) than expertise, although a level of expertise would be required in teaching to both exhort sound doctrine and to refute those who contradict (Titus 1: 9).

Daily Mail October 3, 2014

Cited

'The women who insist they can't make ends meet on £100,000 a year: Dubbed the 'squeezed upper middle', they struggle to pay for school fees, lavish holidays and desirable addresses to keep up with their friends. Hankies at the ready!'

Cited

‘I also love buying clothes, shoes and bags — from the High Street, not designer, as I’d rather get several outfits for the price of one with a label.

‘Half the clothes I buy I don’t even wear, because I forget I have them and eventually end up giving them to friends, or the charity shop where my mum helps out. I’ve started buying lots of baby clothes for Summer now, too.

Yes, I am so off when I write about social rules and social status again and again being so prevalent in Western society.

As Jay Leno would state 'Yes, I am way off here'.