To Know as We are Known, Parker J. Palmer

Good Teaching is...

Ron Jackson

In his classic work on education To Know as We are Known, Parker J. Palmer re-tells the story of Abba Felix. Abba Felix was one of the fourth-century desert fathers. As was the custom of the time, some brothers went to see Abba Felix in the desert and "begged him to say a word to them."

I see a similar picture in my mind of a group of young people climbing up a mountain to see a holy man and asking about the meaning of life. However, in this story instead of giving the young men an answer, Abba Felix is silent. The young men wait but after a while Abba Felix breaks the silence and answers their question with one of his own. "You wish to hear a word?"

"Yes, Abba," the young men said.

"There are no more words nowadays," Abba Felix replies.

He then goes on to explain that in the past when the old men spoke a word, that word was listened to. People did what the old men and women said. But now since the young men "ask without doing, the old men do not find anything to say." Hearing this reply the brothers groaned, and said "Pray for us Abba."1

Several things about teaching come to my mind after hearing this story...

Good teaching doesn't always give an answer
At least not a single answer. This is perhaps why narrative is such a great teacher. Stories aren't always clean. Many Bible stories are messy. They don't have a clean outcome, they end abruptly, and most of them don't say a word about how we are to interpret or apply them. When we tell these stories to children we tend to clean them up a bit, and we should. However, for our youth and college students we need to re-tell these stories and not leave out the messy parts. Life is messy; it doesn't always end nicely. Fairy tales do, but not life. We need to allow the stories of scripture to speak for themselves, and we must resist the temptation to give only one meaning or interpretation to the story. This lack of single meaning doesn't only apply to biblical stories. Look at the story of Abba Felix. It leaves one with almost as many questions as answers.

Good teaching is comfortable with tension
My students get so uptight when someone asks me a tough question. I love the tension. I get excited when something I've said is challenged, especially when I perceive that the person asking the question is honestly seeking. Answering tough questions can be stressful. A lot hangs on the answer; however, good teaching doesn't have to have all the answers (Yes, you read that right - good teaching is not about having all the right answers!). Good teaching requires leaders and a people who are comfortable with a certain amount of anxiety. Being comfortable with tension frees us from always having to be right. There is mystery and wonder associated with our faith, and for too long youth workers have been more "Bible Answer Men" than fellow travelers on the highway of faith.

In speaking of our knowledge of God, John Chrysostom said, "Whatever knowledge we may have, it is still imperfect. How is it that some people claim to have a full and precise knowledge of God? Where God is concerned, we cannot even say just how wrong our perception of Him is."2

Good teaching happens in a safe place
Our youth groups, Bible studies, and small groups need to be places where students feel safe. Not only physically safe - although that is important - but we need to create teaching environments that are emotional harbors which allow our youth to express themselves in non-judgmental or hyper-critical ways.

Good teaching occurs in community
"The authority of scripture derives its intelligibility from the existence of a community that knows its life depends on faithful remembering of God's care of His creation thought the calling of Israel and the life of Jesus."3

Discipleship is truly a communal activity. For too long we have made it an activity of an individual. As much as conservative America hates to admit it, Hillary Clinton is right - it does indeed take a village.

Good teaching creates a place where Truth is practiced
To teach, Parker Palmer says, is to "create a space in which obedience to truth is practiced."4 Good teaching pays attention to truth. I'm not just talking about propositional truth, but personal/relational Truth as well. Propositional truth is important. Good teachers pay close attention to propositional truth. However, personal/relational truth is what good Christian teaching should be after. Our goal is not to fill our students' minds with information, but to createan environment where they can meet and have an encounter with Jesus Christ.

In Finding God at Harvard, Kelly Monroe writes about the Harvard shield. Anyone who has ever seen a Harvard T-shirt, ball cap or notebook has seen that shield. The shield has a Latin word on it, VERITAS. VERITAS is Harvard's Motto. VERITAS is Latin for truth. In 1646 when the motto was adopted, Truth was understood to be not simply facts and figures, VERITAS was also a person. That person was Jesus.5 Good teaching not only passes on propositional truth but creates a place where students can meet and have relationship with the Truth, Jesus!

Parker J. Palmer's explorations of education as a spiritual journey and of the inner lives of educators have been deeply influential. We explore his teachings and contribution. contents: introduction | parker j. palmer - life | education as a spiritual journey | parker palmer - knowing, teaching and learning | participating in a community of truth | creating space for learning | attending to the inner life of educators | calling | parker palmer - assessment and conclusion | further reading and references | parker palmer links | how to cite this piece

My vocation (to use the poet's term) is the spiritual life, the quest for God, which relies on the eye of the heart. My avocation is education, the quest for knowledge, which relies on the eye of the mind. I have seen life through both these eyes as long as I can remember - but the two images have not always coincided... I have been forced to find ways for my eyes to work together, to find a common focus for my spirit-seeking heart and my knowledge-seeking mind that embraces reality in all its amazing dimensions. (Parker Palmer 1993: xxiv)

Parker J. Palmer (1939-) has touched many people through his work. In that old Quaker phrase he has been able to speak to their condition. Partly this ability flows from the truth of his subject matter; partly from his capacity to draw from, and reflect upon, his own experience; and partly from the directness and accessibility of his writing. As well as being a gifted teacher, Parker Palmer has authored at least three landmark books - The Company of Strangers: Christians and the renewal of American public life (1983), To Know as We are Known. Education as a spiritual journey (1983) and The Courage to Teach. Exploring the inner landscape of a teacher’s life (1998). He has also written on community (1977), paradox (1980), the spirituality of work, creativity and caring (1990) and vocation (2000). His most recent book - A Hidden Wholeness; The Journey Toward an Undivided Life - was published in 2004. Along the way Parker Palmer has picked up eight honorary doctorates and several national awards. The Leadership Project, a 1998 US survey of 10,000 administrators and faculty named Parker J. Palmer one of the thirty most influential senior leaders in higher education and one of ten key "agenda-setters" of the past decade. 

The terrain that Parker J. Palmer explores has had a number of distinguished visitors such as Donald Schön and Michael Polanyi on knowing and reflection; and Martin Buber on spirituality, community and education. However, Parker Palmer has the knack, probably born  of a long and continuing engagement with people in workshops and groups, of exploring such themes in ways that resonate with some very contemporary concerns. To appreciate this contribution it is important to attend both to Parker Palmer's 'leading ideas' and to the particular circumstances in which they found life.

Life

Parker J. Palmer grew up in a white, upper-middle-class suburb of Chicago. His father, Max J. Palmer, worked for the same fine chinaware company for 50 years. In the end he owned the company and was Chairman of the Board. Parker Palmer talks about his father teaching him to rely on a 'larger and deeper grace' and modelling compassion and generosity. Although Parker Palmer embarked on a rather different vocational path, the elder Palmer never put pressure on him 'to be one thing or another' (Faith Alive 2004). In grade school Parker Palmer became fascinated by flight and when in high school he intended to become a naval aviator (followed by a career in advertising - he had already become fascinated by language) (Palmer 2000: 13). However, he ended up at Carleton College, Minnesota where he gained a BA in Philosophy and Sociology (and was elected to Phi Beta Kappa). Parker Palmer was the first in the family to attend college (Palmer 1998: 22). From Carleton he went to the Union Theological Seminary, NYC - certain that the ministry was his calling. However, at the end of his first year, as Parker Palmer has wryly put it, 'God spoke to me - in the form of mediocre grades and massive misery - and informed me that under no conditions was I to become an ordained leader in His or Her church' (Palmer 2000: 19-20). Fairly quickly he started a Masters in Sociology at the University of California at Berkeley (1962) and then went on to do his PhD there (which he received in 1970). In the middle of graduate school Palmer taught for two years (1965-7) - finding that he both loved the experience and was good at it. He has commented that Berkeley in the sixties was 'an astounding mix of shadow and light'. Parker Palmer continued:

[C]ontrary to the current myth, many of us were less seduced by the shadow than drawn by the light, coming away from that time and place with a lifelong sense of hope, a feeling for community, a passion for social change. (ibid.: 20)

Parker Palmer made the decision to leave the academy believing that a university career would be a 'cop out'.

Instead Parker J. Palmer went to Washington DC in 1969 as a community organizer. 'My heart wanted to keep teaching', he has commented, 'but my ethics - laced liberally with ego - told me I was supposed to save the city' (ibid.: 21). After two or so years of community organizing Parker Palmer was offered a faculty post (in sociology) at Georgetown University - which also involved working with students in the surrounding communities. He later commented that by looking anew at his community work he saw that as an organizer he never stopped being a teacher  he was simply teaching 'in a classroom without walls' (op. cit.). However, Parker Palmer was burnt-out after five years community work - he was 'too thin-skinned to make a good community organizer' (ibid.: 22). In 1974 he opted to take a years sabbatical at Pendle Hill the Quaker retreat centre near Philadelphia. The year at Pendle Hill grew into ten or more when he became Dean of Studies there (he left in 1985).

The time at Pendle Hill was of fundamental significance. Parker Palmer found God in the silence of the Quaker meetings at the retreat. Until then, he has commented, faith and the experience of God had been an intellectual exercise. 'In the silence, I was able to reconstruct my faith life in a way that just wouldn't have happened otherwise,' he has said. 'It was a much more direct experience of how God was working in my life' (Faith Alive 2004). Parker Palmer was also diagnosed as suffering from clinical depression. 'When I was young', he later wrote, 'there were very few elders willing to talk about the darkness; most of them pretended that success was all they had known' (Parker Palmer 2000: 19). When 'darkness' first descended in his early twenties there was a sense of failure. Now, in his early forties, he began to see that depression was largely situational - and that while it crushed him - it was also, in a way, his friend. It kept his feet on the ground (ibid.: 66). From that painful period, Parker Palmer learned, as he has said, to tell the truth about himself (Faith Alive 2004). It was also while at Pendle Hill that Parker Palmer came to the attention of wider public through his writing. He wrote on community (in a Pendle Hill pamphlet) (1977), the power of paradox (1980) and produced his acclaimed books on spirituality and education (1983) and the role of Christians in the renewal of public life (1983).

After Pendle Hill, Parker J. Palmer was in demand as a speaker and facilitator - and he worked with a variety of institutions including universities and colleges, schools, community organizations, religious groups, foundations and corporations. He served as a senior associate of the American Association of Higher Education and was a senior adviser to the Fetzer Institute. One of the most significant pieces of work that he undertook with the Institute was the 'Courage to Teach' program, piloted in Michigan from 1994 to 1996, and subsequently replicated in coastal Carolina, Dallas, the Baltimore-Washington DC area, southwest Michigan and Washington State. This work resulted in the establishment of the Center for Teacher Formation in 1997 and contributed to Parker Palmer's well-received book The Courage to Teach (1998). Subsequently he has written about vocation (2000) and the integrated life (2004). Now Parker Palmer is reported as preparing to 'leave the public arena of appearances and applause for a quieter, more solitary work' (Faith Alive 2004). 'I don't want to be a 70-year-old man who doesn't know who he is when the books are out of print and the audiences are no longer applauding. I've decided to retire in order to make space for whatever else is out there' (op. cit.).

Education as a spiritual journey

Parker J. Palmer has written in various places of the pain experienced by many educators. In particular he has highlighted the 'pain of disconnection'. This disconnection is from colleagues, students, and their hearts (1993: x). The culture and size of the institutions and settings where people teach, the emphasis upon achieving grades and gaining marketable skills, and the pressure to 'produce' all take their toll. Hope, optimism and social commitment are not in abundance in many formal educational systems (see Halpin 2003). As a result, Parker Palmer suggests, some educators have been turning to the spiritual traditions for the hope they offer. All them, he says, 'are ultimately concerned with getting us reconnected' (1993: x). The problem with this it that in the past (and today) the spiritual traditions are often used 'to obstruct inquiry rather than encourage it. As a result Parker Palmer looked to a spirituality of sources in education rather than one of ends.

A spirituality of ends wants to dictate the desirable outcomes of education in the life of the student. It uses the spiritual tradition as a template against which the ideas, beliefs, and behaviours of the student are to be measured. The goal is to shape the student to the template by the time his of her formal education concludes.

But that sort of education never gets started; it is no education at all. Authentic spirituality wants to open us to truth - whatever truth may be, wherever truth may take us. Such a spirituality does not dictate where we must go, but trusts that any path walked with integrity will take us to a place of knowledge. Such a spirituality encourages us to welcome diversity and conflict, to tolerate ambiguity, and to embrace paradox. By this understanding, the spirituality of education is not about dictating ends. It is about examining and clarifying the inner sources of teaching and learning, ridding us of the toxins that poison our hearts and minds. (Parker Palmer 1993: xi)

Palmer looks to an education that is prayerful and transcendent - for it is only when both are present can authentic and spontaneous relations flourish between ourselves and the world. Here we touch on what Parker Palmer views as the insight most central to spiritual experience: 'we are known in detail and depth by the love that created and sustains us, known as members of a community of creation that depends on us and on which we depend' (1983: 10).