Opening a Space for Learning: Honor and Relationships at Webb

A Chapel Talk for the Webb School

Jeff Edmonds

21, January, 2003

I’m going to start today with a quote from the philosopher Martin Heidegger.

Heidegger writes: What teaching calls for is to let learn. Indeed the proper teacher lets nothing else be learned than learning.

These two sentences, like much of what Heidegger writes, are deceptively simple, but they speak to two essential issues in the life of any school. First, how should we, as teachers, teach. Second, how we should learn. The answer to these questions lies somewhere in the relationship between teacher and student. Teaching can only be defined in terms of learning—and vice versa. It’s this relationship that provides the foundation of what we do here at Webb. It is the heart of our community. In order that we be good at what we do here, we teachers have a responsibility to teach well and you students have a responsibility to learn well.

Webb School has a particular idea about what establishes the relationship between teaching and learning. We cannot talk about what is at the heart of Webb without talking about the idea of honor. The honor code provides the foundation for life here at Webb, and I’m going to make the claim that the idea of honor is essentially about relationships. The honor code at Webb takes a couple of explicit forms. First, there’s the pledge: “I pledge my word of honor as a Webb lady or gentleman that I have neither given nor received unauthorized aid on this assignment.” Also, there is a form of the honor code that is a warning: “Do not lie, cheat, steal, or plagiarize.” These two forms of honor are the easiest to state and the ones most often talked about, and they are the types of honor that we enforce by means of the honor council.

These two expressions of honor, however, cannot fully capture the essence of what it means to be honorable. Honor is a positive concept. Honor is something we can only attain by virtue of what we do, not by virtue of what we are not permitted to do. A rock does not lie, cheat, or steal, but a rock is not honorable. Am I as honorable as, say, Martin Luther King or Mahatma Ghandi just because I do not lie, cheat, or steal? These are extreme examples, but they work to demonstrate a point—honor is something to be won. It is something we must seek. An athlete does not achieve honors by virtue of what he or she does not do, but by virtue of what he or she accomplishes. I want to set before you this morning a positive concept of honor. Honor is a creative act. We create honor for ourselves by creating something in the world.

How does this fit with our honor code? The answer to this question comes to light when we ask the honor code a simple question, the sort of question a student might ask a teacher: Why? Why shouldn’t we lie, cheat, or steal? In giving a tentative answer to this question, I will return to the idea of relationships. We should not lie, cheat, or steal so that others can trust us. At the core of the honor code lies the notion of trust, a notion that lies at the core of relationships as well. Honor is about creating possibilities for relationships. At Webb relationships and trust take three easily recognized forms: student to student, student to teacher, and teacher to teacher. If we are going to be a strong community, these relationships must be strong. If we are going to be an honorable community, these relationships must be based on trust.

As I talked about in the beginning, I’m going to focus on the second of these relationships, the relationship between student and teacher, the relationship in which we are engaged at this moment. And to help explain this relationship, I would like to turn back to one of my teachers, Heidegger, and focus in on what he is saying. The first sentence I quoted to you was this: “What teaching calls for is to let learn.” What does it mean “to let learn.” At first glance this seems like a notion of teaching that is too passive. We are teachers! We are bearers of knowledge, of the fire of truth, bringing the light of understanding to our empty and all-too-moldable students! Heidegger, however, suggests a different model for the teacher. The teacher should be one who stands back, who provides a place for the student to learn. Teachers should not fill students up with knowledge; rather, they should let students learn. Essentially, Heidegger is saying that our first duty as teachers is to trust students and to allow them to learn on their own.

“Indeed,” says Heidegger, “the proper teacher lets nothing else be learned than learning.” In order to understand what Heidegger means here, we can look back at the figure of Socrates. Socrates was a great teacher and citizen of his community. The Oracle at Delphi proclaimed him the wisest man in all Athens, saying, “Socrates is wisest because he knows that he knows nothing.” (Repeat) Armed with his own confusion, Socrates encouraged the youth of Athens to question everything—to ask why they were doing what they were doing, to ask the purpose of laws, to ask if the actions of their community were just and virtuous. Socrates’ legacy of critical thinking remains at the basis of every productive inquiry in the modern world. Socrates knew that he didn’t know—and that gave him the right, the necessity, and the desire to question. It wasn’t his knowledge of right and wrong or of physics or of literature that made Socrates a great teacher. It was his ability to suspend belief and his ability to question the actions of the people he lived with that made him great. Learning does not begin with answers. It begins with questions. Learning is a process of questioning. This is what Heidegger means when he writes that proper teaching lets nothing else be learned than learning. Socrates was simultaneously a great teacher and great learner—he embodies the student-teacher relationship perfectly: he has the wisdom of a teacher and the productive confusion of a student.

As a teacher and purveyor of knowledge I have a responsibility not to give you answers: nothing else must be learned than learning. As students and seekers of knowledge, you have a responsibility to question me. This sort of relationship could easily be viewed as one that undermines the trust I was talking about earlier. I just told you not to listen to what I say, not to trust the knowledge I give you. This is your role as a student. And I stand by that conviction. But I also stand by the conviction that trust runs deeper than knowledge, and honor runs deeper than what we say. Just like there is more to the honor code than not lying, there is more to me what I say to you. There is more to you than the knowledge you receive. I have to be able to trust you to question me. You have to be able to trust me to allow you the space to question me.

There will be people standing in front of you your whole life like I am standing in front of you today. When they stand in front of you, they assume the status of teacher, and you take on the status of student. Do not deny your right as a student. Question those people. Ask them to explain themselves. Absorb what they say, but hold it at a healthy, skeptical distance. You are involved in the precious struggle of forming yourself—you must make yourself something beautiful. Do not accept the things that run contrary to your inner selves. But do this, too: find what is beautiful in them. Swallow those things up. Make yourself. Create yourself. Rocks cannot be honorable—they cannot pick and choose who they would like to be. You have the ability to make yourself a beautiful person. Someday, maybe even today, all of you will be teachers, and there will be people learning from you. It is that moment when you must be most careful, but you must be careful in a particular way—you must be careful to let yourself go. You must be careful not to stick too closely beside what you know. True knowledge is harder to come by than it seems, as anyone who has tried to answer the question, “Who am I?” knows.

I will leave you with a mystery that is worth pondering as you head out into your day: we can learn from each other. To me, this is the most miraculous of miracles, evidence if there is any of true goodness in the world. We can understand each other. We are not perfect strangers. Listen to me. Talk to me. Think, feel, drink in this world. Make the world and everyone you meet a part of you. Make yourself a part of the world, a part of everyone you meet.

We can learn from each other: Is this not a precious thing?