Teaching, Learning, and Humility

I'm reading What the Best College Teachers Do by Ken Bain and Exiles from Eden: Religion and the Academic Vocation in America by Mark R. Schwehn. Bain says the best teachers have the humility to assume that when students aren't learning well, the teacher is at least partly to blame. Schwehn says students need the humility to presume that others have the wisdom and authority to teach them. So humility is a virtue required of both teachers and students in order for learning to take place. As a teacher, Jesus modeled humility and urged his disciples to imitate his example.

The Socratic Method & the Bible

Socrates cross-examined his contemporaries who claimed to be wise. He used the “Socratic Method” of critical questioning to show that these “authorities” were not nearly as wise as they thought they were. Socrates applied his disposition to question authority to books as well. For him, books were not repositories of truth to be digested but instead records of thinking to be critically engaged. But what about the Bible? If that book is God’s authoritative Word, then it does contain important truths we ought to believe. Still, Socrates was partially right even here. We need to question our interpretations of scripture.