I have used the term “children of the mind” several times in recent weeks in talking about our relationship with our students. Jane and I had been using the term for years before I came across the phrase in one of Orson Scott Card’s Ender novels. His use of the term was similar to what Jane and I meant by it–but different in many respects.
Many people think a teacher stands at the front of a class and delivers knowledge to students. They think, ideally, we should be robots programmed to deliver particular facts in a particular sequence that will lead students to specific conclusions about particular things. They want us to avoid anything that will lead students to think otherwise than their political viewpoint believes. We are supposed to be value neutral about everything.
This is true of people on both sides of the political spectrum. Those on the left are only slightly more subtle about it than those on the right.
But to be a good teacher, you have to be a human being. The things you value will find their way into student’s lives no matter how hard you try otherwise.
Not all of our students became our “children of the mind.” Those who did share no particular political belief system. Some of them were the “best and brightest.” Some of them were anything but that. And many fell into the vast middle in terms of native intelligence.
Our classes did not reflect a particular belief system. But the practice of our daily lives demonstrated a value system some of our students seem to have–consciously or otherwise–embraced. Neither of us professed a belief in Christianity, but as I walked down the hall one day with one of our students she turned to me and said, “You know, you and Ms. Dybowski are the most Christian people I know. Everything you do seems based on love for others. It’s like you really care about all of us.”
Love was at the center of our lives. It was not something either of us thought about. It was simply the uppermost of a group of guiding principles. I don’t think either of us ever thought of ourselves as particularly Christian, though Christ was an important figure in our lives. We were more interested in his humanity than any claim to godhood. He said “Love one another” was the greatest commandment–and it was that idea we embraced above all else.
The acceptance of that idea took us to logic and reason and the use of these to examine evidence before making decisions. We acted out of love but decided based on reason, logic, and evidence. In a world in which everyone acted out of love in human interactions, perhaps one would not need to confirm with logic the promptings of love. But the vast majority of human beings act largely out of self-interest, not the needs of others. And the world, beyond human beings and certain other animals, does not know or respect love at all.
We did not hide these things from our students. We could not have done so any more than a person can easily hide the color of his skin. It was that much a piece of who we were.
