THE TEACHER AS GUIDE
Keywords:
Guide, TeacherAbstract
At the heart of all education is a relationship between the teacher and the student. Yet- this relationship is always an encounter with the sacred; the sacred is a mystery that moves our lives decisively from the depths. What follows will be an attempt to re-vision the student/ teacher relationship in the form of a new myth. A myth is a sacred story. Within the context of this sacred story, I wish to speak of three kinds of guides who lead students to three fundamentally different choices; these ultimate choices are in the service of a particular sacred source or god. These three gods are the three principal gods that are manifestations of the source of sources, the god beyond god, or that beyond which no idea or imagination can proceed. In the Jewish mystical tradition this ultimate source was called ein-sof, the origins of all beginnings. Parallel names from other traditions are tao in Taoism, Ometeotl from Central American mythology and the Cloud of Unknowing in the Catholic tradition. The first two gods, of possessive jealousy and power, actually impoverish the source of sources, the god beyond god, by refusing to allow their followers to participate in a four-fold transformation: the transformation of the self, one's neighbor, the world and of the source of sources. This personal and cosmic transformation is only possible when persons are linked to the god of transformation, indeed, become themselves gods of transformation. The source of sources is free to continuously recreate the world only when we are prepared to participate as gods of transformation
References
C. G. Jung, especially Man and His Symbols, New York, 1966,
Joseph Campbell, especially The Hero with a Thousand Faces, Bollingen Series XVIl, Princeton University Press, Princeton, N.J., 1973.
Paulo Freire especially his seminal book. The Pedagogy of the Oppressed, Herder and Herder, New York. 1970.
Paul Friedlander, Plato, And Introduction, Bollingen Series LIX. 1, Princeton University Press, Princeton, New Jersey, 1973, pp. 32-44.
Brewster Ghiselin, The Creative Process, Mentor Books, New York, 1963, pp. 33-42
The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, University of Chicago Press, 1970, especially pp. Il 1-159
