There is No Such Thing as Teaching

When a child comes into a classroom and sits down at a desk, they are often programmed or pre-programmed with a certain expectation of routine. From the western education system's perspective (originating from Germanic structures), teaching effectively functions in a linear format. There is someone there to receive information. The teacher then provides information where the student places it into their memory. They recite or practice said principle or information, then they are ready to permanently have that information. In essence, they follow a mathematical formula of ‘student needs X,’ ‘teacher tells and models and teachers student about X,’ student practices X, then student knows X. When speaking about this process, people (especially teachers and admin) place significant agency and power on the teacher, often attributing 50% or even more of this process to their actions.

There are tests and assessments in the process to ensure this process goes correctly, but I am genuinely trying to represent the logical thought process of the system I have been apart of for 10+ years now in an authentic, real way. After all, I am intentionally avoiding the mention of over testing and ‘teaching through assessment’ that plagues American schools, or bad teaching practices that are rote memorization or etc. Everything praised within our school system (critical thinking, research, inference, etc.) all falls into this similar format and similar equation.

But this is a lie. This system is not true, and it's an illusion captured under the associations of the word teaching repeatedly used and misunderstood.

To begin, this kind of linear, supposedly ‘logical’ thinking presumes a number of simply false things that western society struggles to grapple with. First of all, it assumes the static nature of the teacher, the student, and the knowledge (and everything else that is ancillary to these variables). Just about everything taught to students is conceptual, and the realm of concepts is static and unchanging. If the concepts change, then new concepts arise with differentiation from the old to the new. Even if the terms stay the same, the concepts exist both old and new; like a word changing its meaning over time (e.g. awful).

But what is the problem with the static nature of concepts? Well, then don’t effectively guide students in the mailable and consistently fragmenting, dying, regenerating, conflating, and birthing nature of reality. Which brings me to a second lie of education: this information is supposed to be useful. Regardless of how we phrase it, there is an unspoken (or very often spoken) lie that the information taught here will provide some sort of truth, certainty, utility, ease, and more. After all, that is what is needed to justify the system, and that is what is used to justify attending and keeping any sort of educational and teacher-student system.

The kind of certainty and stability implied by this system often developed this illusionary self. Mingyur Rinpoche uses the term ego-self or ego, but we could easily replace the signifier to get the same signified (replace the word to get the same idea). What we are talking about here is identity, the self, this conceptualization of ourselves as this stable thing that starts with a foundation and is routinely built upon. But this is a lie.

As Mingyur Rinpoche states in In Love with the World, when we talk about identity and the ego specifically, me can make it "sound like an entity that has a shape and a size, and that can be extracted like a tooth." But, he continues, the "Ego is not an object; it's more like a process that follows through on the proclivity for grasping, and for holding on to fixed ideas and identities. What we call ego is really an ever-changing perception, and although it is central to our narrative story, it is not a thing... we misperceive the constant flow of our body and mind and mistake it for a solid, unchanging self... we do not need to get rid of the ego... because it never existed in the first place" (39). 

Applied to these first two lies, teaching within the western context often implies a stable self that is built upon, developed, and evolved or added to over time. It implies a central ego or 'you' that is then given information that is attached to, like modifications to a car or weapons on a fighter jet. Teachers argue, "This will help you become more prepared" or "How will you be able to compete without this piece of knowledge," as if sending students to become equipt with weapons for the war-like reality they impose on them. 

The third lie, and likely the most important one, is that the student will not learn this information if they did not have the teacher or teacher system to teach this information to them. In other words, the system assumes that the student will be in danger, blind, fail, or never acquire the information that the teacher provides. As a result, there is incredible anxiety and trepidation in the teacher-realm as to give and delineate ALL information required by the standards or by life: if we don’t give them this information and teach it to them, how will they get on in life? Who else is going to do it?

But how are these lies?

First of all, the nature of life is change. While the statement itself seems obvious, the actual application of it especially within the western world has been seriously problematic. If you were to tell this phrase to a typical person in the American context, they will often accept it as true. However, what do their actions say about the actual acquiring of this information? How much are people, generally speaking, attached to the permanence they imagine in life, in the illusions of identity, in the promise of stability, and more? Like a child that states, “I know it is important to eat healthy” but proceeds to eat a horrific amount of sugar, the information may be ‘known,’ but it is not lived.

And I know some math or rhetoric teacher will insistent on the unchanging nature of certain principles taught in school. They will say, mathematics doesn’t change simply on a day to day basis or some English teacher will argue that students need to learn to write and communicate, and that doesn’t change. I would argue that the conceptual nature of mathematics, English, and more does not change, while the reality and application does, and do often the change associated with the reality is ignored for the sake of the indoctrinization of the conceptual realm. In other words, we emphasize the unchanging world of concepts, paper and theoretical application of these areas, rather than the real world application that often has exceptions, changes depending on context, and a complete inability to succeed or apply the information we desire to apply with the desired success result.

Returning to lessons from Mingyur Rinpoche: "Modern people often talk about themselves in static mental postures, such as I am an angry person, or I am essentially jealous or basically greedy... But funneling our immense complexity into a reductive profile, we become tricked into thinking that we know ourselves, while missing most of what there is to know... We all spend more time in some states than in others, but when we prioritize one in order to identify the real me, we diminish access to the never-ending variations that influence how and what we perceive; and this induces our habits to repeat themselves (In Love with the World 59).

The current application of teaching leans into this concept of permanence and reductive communication of concepts, often avoiding the complex reality of those concepts in, well, reality. That feeling of dissatisfaction and frustration with the school system, the feeling of disconnect between school and life, is the proof of this reality. When students proclaim that school doesn't really teach them anything or they learned way more on the job than they did in life, they are effectively proclaiming: my teachers communicated a conceptual, static reality to me that was in drastic contrast with the fluctuating, flowing reality I love and feel.

And here is the thing about these 2 false assumptions: they can be addressed with the current system. In fact, great teachers already address both of the above, false presumptions. Great teachers today would teacher with an awareness that the concepts they apply within the classroom need to be tested practically, or that the contextual and real-world application needs to factor in consistent changes of variables, including the consistent change of the self. Within a literature context, this would look like a teacher reading a poem with the class at the beginning of the year, then reading the same poem at the end to see how the students, as people, have changed and shifted throughout the year. However, to be clear, if the students only focus on how their interpretation of the literature has shifted and not how they, as people, have shifted, that would be (once again) an assumption of stability of the teacher and the student and the continuation of that lie that the student effectively stays the same, but only gains more information.

In reality, the teacher and the student are, effectively, experiencing consistent deaths and rebirths throughout the year. There is not single ‘teacher’ in the classroom teaching a single ‘student’ in the classroom. Instead, each individual is consistently dying through their experiences, and consistently being reborn through their revelations. The teacher on the first day of school is not the same teacher in the second week of school (let alone the last week of the school year), despite the appearance of material consistency. Thus, the student that is reading the book at the beginning of the unit is not the same as the student that is reading the book at the end of the unit; they have quite literally died over the course of the unit and have reborn (their cells have changed, their mind has molded, etc.) before the close of the book.

We are not transitioning from one state to another, but rather we are the transitions. 

And while a teacher might be nodding in agreement with this, thinking I know this, this is true, I would argue that (like me) you likely don’t know it, and you’re likely not taking this far enough in your thought process. Because when we continue to teacher, often we still apply this static formula in our practice that this is simply a student that has gained information and that their ‘death,’ as I stated it, is much more fractional. Instead, I would challenge you and myself to take this to the furthest extent possible: the person you are a month into school is unrecognizable different that the person you were at the beginning. If we were to pay attention to the minuscule changed and infinite variety of deaths we have experienced in just that short time, changes we often overlook as being ‘too small’ to sufficiently change our identity, we would realize those changes are far more significant that we often give them credit for. There is no stable identity. We are functionally and literally dead, and reborn on a consistent, regular basis, even if we maintain the illusion of consistent thought and knowledge.

But none of this really disproves the existence of teaching or really functions to undermine in any real way what we do as educators or teachers in the real world, until we get to lie 3: the student will not learn this information unless I teach it to them. We have to revisit that formula: Teacher gives student X. Student studies X. Student practices X. Then student knows X. Everything about this formula reeks of stability, linearity, and consistency. It is a conceptual framework that acts like a cookie cutter of the real world, but in acting this way, it often cuts out the parts inconvenient or counter to the concept. It is like calling a person good or beautiful and cutting out the parts of their existence that don’t fit, just so the concept and illusion can be preserved.

But how does Teacher give student X? How does this formula work? How could I, for instance, teach you anything?

Let’s work with something incredibly simple: I have 6 cats.

Did I teach you this supposedly stable, immutable fact? Was I able to sufficiently give you this information for you to be able to ingest it, infuse it into your memory and mind, conceptualize it, and apply it? Can I assess you on this fact with a quiz or essay and have you write a response to it, maybe considering the validity of this statement, testing it with real-world research (sneaking into my home?), then considering how this information can affirm or deny other conceptual understandings that will frame your world?

But did I teach you this fact, or did I expose you to it?

So all of this has been leading up to my grand conclusion. Should be see fit, please imagine me on a mountain, dressed in robes that float in the wind. Here, on this conceptual mountain, I shall proclaim: There is no teaching, only exposure. 

The reality is simple: I did not ‘teach’ you about how many cats I have. Nor did I sufficiently explain to you anything about that supposed fact. Instead, I merely exposed you to this conceptual fact, and what you do with it is up to you.

Should I want to dive further into it, I could explore: What does it mean to ‘have’ something? What is the conceptual meaning and understanding of cat? Does I own cats or do I own some conceptual creation of cats I have created in my mind, of Odie, of Marnie, and all of my other cats and their names and personalities and supposed identities I impose on them? What does it mean to be an ‘I’ in this situation, or even 6. After all, I supposedly own 6 cats, but I do not always interact with all 6 of them, and some (looking at you Molly) have more interest in isolating themselves and being alone. By all means, do it, and I shall feed you my cat child. However, does this mean I would own 5 cats, and simply feed 1?

And this is why I would argue that to teach is impossible. Instead, it is only possible to expose, and the rest is done by the student. Like an audience member attending a comedy show, I cannot make my students learn any more than they can make the audience laugh; this whole experience is transactional and required the complicity, agency, and action of the other party.

But this is teaching, right? Well, much like the theoretical and conceptual understanding of the term and the real-world application of it, the real-world application of teaching places too much agency and power in the hands of the teacher. It assumes too much regarding the ignorance of the student and it assumes too strongly the power of the teacher.

Nowhere is this more apparent than the frustrated conversations of teachers and administrators attached to the illusion of power and teaching as they explore questions around assessments, designing lessons, and anxiously proclaim: how are we possibly going to teach the students all of this information before they graduate? How are they possibly going to survive in college? How can we improve test scores, because they will not succeed if they do not test better?

But all of these questions revolve around the concepts, not the reality. Rarely do teachers (and especially admin) consider: what is real that is being learned? How have I taught my students to deal with impermanence and change? How have I prepared my students to die? How have I prepared them to reborn themselves? How have I kept my students present, mindful, or present in the real? Do my students understand that this is all a game, a conceptual, Dedalian creation of our society? Do my students even know who they are if we were to strip away their material and conceptual labels?

So I will proclaim, as fervently and assertively as possible, that I am not powerful, I am not able to genuinely and truly teach your child anything, and I am not able to affect any change that they do not affect themselves. However, what I can do is expose them to potential truths, expose them to possible thought processes, and give them opportunities to explore and think and learn for themselves. In the end, there is no such thing as teaching, but there is such thing as the careful and mindful exploration of the self traveling, at thousands of miles an hour, through space on this big rock we call erf.