The greatest violence we as teachers can do is to graduate students who remain slaves to knowledge and the false sense of control they have over it

The Language of Knowing

by: Jason Faulkner

In his book To Know as We Are Known: Education as a Spiritual Journey, Parker Palmer discusses the (d)evolution of the image and purpose of knowledge. To paraphrase, Palmer posits that in pre-modern times, knowledge was approached lovingly, reverently, and for the purposes of drawing a knower into a deeper communion with the known—that “hidden wholeness” of creation of which Merton speaks. Modern images of knowledge, however, suggest that we value knowledge only to the extent that it allows the knower to control, to manipulate, and to lay claim on the known. Palmer goes on to suggest that this latter approach to knowledge is, at its core, akin to that first sin in the Garden of Eden:

“In the language of religious tradition, Adam and Eve committed the first sin. In the language of intellectual tradition, they made the first epistemological error . . . The sin, the error, is not our hunger for knowledge . . . [rather] Adam and Eve were driven from the garden because of the kind of knowledge they reached for—a knowledge that distrusted and excluded God. Their desire to know arose not from love but from curiosity and control, from the desire to possess powers belonging to God alone” (emphasis Palmer’s).

I have no doubt that God desired for Adam and Eve the pursuit and attainment of wisdom, but I have to believe He wanted them to receive this gift by way of reverence for and relationship with Him. The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. But this pathway towards wisdom requires humility and, ultimately, acknowledgement that we are not in control. Indeed, how beautiful that fruit must have appeared to Eve! How easily plucked, held, examined, owned. In this single act Eve rejected the very nature of wisdom.

This notion of knowledge-as-control is troubling because it has become common, even in classical Christian education, to talk about “teaching for mastery” and “mastery learning.” My own assessment methodology for my math classes revolves around this idea of mastery, and I use this language with my students almost daily, telling them that they must master this or that. While I believe that it is good thing to exhort students toward cumulative mastery of critical mathematical concepts and skills, I am also somewhat bothered by my uncritical assumption of this idea. Could my use of this language undermine those more organic mathematical discussions and explorations that I hope might cultivate in my students a love for math and God’s nature revealed therein?

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