Can a teacher teach? Can anything be taught? Is there anything to teach?
These are genuine questions. Even so I cannot think that this would lead us to a 'let us not teach' stand. And thus arises the question, what then is a position one can place oneself in, while being in an educative process? Of course, all this is perhaps only, theoretical dreaming, because the challenge of the classroom completely throws you open and leaves you vulnerable. That is perhaps one reason that teachers choose the strict posture. Vulnerability can be difficult to maintain and at times also counter productive. There are only few people I have read about who can be so, and mostly they seem to be people who are also very self-assured personalities and clear about their tasks for instance K or DH. Can we all be so? Ironically, these kind of people are sometimes quite stuck in their own ways.
Mostly those who are in doubt seem to be more open. And this perhaps gives us a pathway of a possible stand. That one not be very certain of one's certainties. For instance, don't we all know about patriarchy, about religious regressiveness versus modern ideas. About proper behaviour etc. Now I recall that in a school i spent time in, gender or ideas about gender issues in society were never taught. Of course, gender differentiation was minimal and the educative content was from a liberal standpoint. The school and the teachers however, never explicitly inculcated it and in fact true to the spirit of the school, questioned a simple activist kind of position - not to question it as such, but to ask students to understand what drove them to it. Even so, a girl, who saw very gendered behaviour among her neighbours was aware and disturbed by it and raised a question in a conversation at school. Now a teacher in this context can immediately tell her about how some families are not broad minded, well educated, modern or plain silly. Or the teacher can say, beta have an open mind, maybe we are judging her too harshly. Or perhaps the 'teacher' can simply stay with the student on that inquiry, share her wonder and ask questions with her... to open up the question in a way that assumptions and expectations within it, if any, reveal themselves automatically, and the student can see the situation as closely to the truth of its entirety. in that situation, the student may choose to judge, deride or sympathize with that girl - and who are we to know what is correct. Is it a correct conclusion that she dismisses her behaviour as resulting from patriarchy? Do we know that for sure! And even if it is the right answer - must she arrive at it by the teacher's intervention. Need she arrive at it at all? If we truly believe that minds must be free, we cannot have the hidden rider that only liberal minds are truly free.Can we then live comfortably with our 'regressive' students or even friends? I think more than in school education, this is a challenge in higher education, esp. the social sciences. Can the social sciences move beyond being instructors of modernity? How do we all pas out of premier social science institutes all speaking the same language? Yet we think we are more 'open minded' than say technically educated students. Is that really so? s
And yet, such a teaching is all well to talk about. Can we have the required energy to sustain it.