Teachers choose their vocation for a number of reasons: love of a subject, a desire to share one’s

passion with others, care for young children, interest in understanding the human mind, or to
have a say in shaping the next generation. But the demands of teaching cause many teachers to
lose heart. Is it possible to remain in this demanding profession without losing heart?

In The Courage to Teach, Parker Palmer takes teachers on an inner journey toward reconnecting
their vocation and their students – and recovering their passion for one of the most difficult and
important of human endeavours. This book builds on a simple premise: good teaching cannot be
reduced to technique; good teaching comes from the identity and integrity of the teacher.

Palmer points out that when we consider teaching, we often begin with the ‘what’ question –
what subjects shall we teach? When we delve deeper, we ask the ‘how’ question – what are the
methods to teach well? Next, we ask the ‘why’ question – for what purposes and ends do we
teach? But, rarely, if ever, do we ask the ‘who’ question – who is the self that teaches? How does
the quality of my selfhood form – or deform – the way I relate to my students, my subjects, my
colleagues, my world? How can educational institutions sustain and deepen the selfhood from
which good teaching comes?

Good teaching comes in various forms but good teachers seem to share an important trait: ‘they
are truly present in the classroom, deeply engaged with their students and their subject.’ They
‘are able to weave a complex web of connections among themselves, their subjects, and their
students, so that students can learn to weave a world for themselves.’ Palmer writes of his own
mentor, who seemed to break every ‘rule’ of good teaching – he lectured non-stop, there was
little room for questions or comments, he listened poorly to students because he was keen to
share his own knowledge of the subject. Yet he was an inspiring and effective teacher. Later, in
his teaching career, Palmer tried to emulate his professor’s methods but failed. He writes: As we
learn more about who we are, we can learn techniques that reveal rather than conceal the
personhood from which good teaching comes. Palmer discovered that dialoguing was more
integral to his being than non-stop lecturing, a method that was coherent with his mentor. A
method of teaching derives its merit largely from its integration with the teacher who employs it.
A familiar phrase of Krishnamurti comes to mind: Don’t ask ‘How?’ Find out for yourself.

Paradoxes, not polarities

A common problem in classrooms is fear. There is nothing more crippling to learning than fear –
either in the student or the teacher. Fear is present where there is a sense of disconnectedness,
where teachers are distanced from their students and subjects. What is it that teachers are afraid
of? Palmer answers: ...a live encounter with an ‘alien otherness’ that can speak freely, speak its
own truth and may tell us what we may not wish to hear. Teachers want control and are afraid to
allow their own worldview to be challenged. However, the danger is that, in a Krishnamurti
school, it is possible for the teacher to speak of fear or ambition during a culture class in a
manner in which his own fear or ambition is not acknowledged. This disconnectedness could
communicate destructively to the students.
Palmer explores the nature of the disconnectedness that we experience, which leads to a way of
teaching and learning that is driven by fear. Another cause for our disconnectedness is the
tendency to think in polarities. One might have encountered these polarities even while reading
this review – to seek the identity and integrity of the teacher is all right, but one needs technique
as well. Or, more commonly, ‘it is all very well to understand oneself but one also needs to find a
job.’ The trouble with these oft-encountered exploration-stoppers is that one part of them is
pitted against the other. Either – Or. One must come at the expense of the other. Palmer provides
a means to step out of this dilemma: he asks if it is possible for us to think in terms of paradoxes.
He quotes Niels Bohr, the Nobel-prize-winning physicist: The opposite of a true statement is a
false statement, but the opposite of a profound truth can be another profound truth.
Can light behave simultaneously like particles and waves? Can thought discover its own
limitations? Can teachers not condition children even as they un-condition themselves? Can one
speak of the confusions in one’s life while one finds a sane way of living? Can teachers guide
young people to discover a direction in their own lives without creating a model? Can one
discover who one is through relationship?
Palmer further shows the con-sequences of making such a division where life’s options are
shown as mutually exclusive:

 We separate head from heart. Result: minds that do not know how to feel and hearts that do
not know how to think.
 We separate facts from feelings. Result: bloodless facts that make the world distant and
remote and ignorant emotions that reduce truth to how one feels today.
 We separate theory from practice. Result: theories that have little to do with life and practice
that is uninformed by understanding.
 We separate teaching from learning. Result: teachers who talk but do not listen and students
who listen but do not talk.

Paradox may be used in pedagogical design, thereby embracing a both-and approach rather than
a divisive either-or. Palmer speaks of six paradoxes that he is aware of while constructing a
classroom session:

1. The space should be bounded and open. There needs to be space for questions but the
discussion needs boundaries to prevent meandering.
2. The space should be hospitable and ‘charged’. An open space needs to be hospitable so it is
not forbidding, however it also needs to be challenging.
3. The space should invite the voice of the individual and the voice of the group.
4. The space should honour the ‘little’ stories of the students and the ‘big’ stories of the
disciplines and tradition.
5. The space should support solitude, and surround it with the resources of the community.
6. The space should welcome both silence and speech.

A community of truth
While the first three chapters of the book focus on the individual teacher, Palmer devotes the
second part of the book to learning in a community. Teaching is a public profession that is
practised privately. Surgeons operate in the presence of other doctors, lawyers argue their cases
in public view, so why do teachers seek the security of a closed classroom? Palmer reminds us
that: If we want to grow in our practice, we have two places to go: to the inner ground from
which teaching comes and to the community of fellow teachers from whom we can learn more
about ourselves and our craft.What, then, is the nature of a community that can support the
individual teacher’s quest to discover an integral way to teach? Is it not to draw on both the
sources?
Palmer writes of a ‘community of truth’ whose hallmark is that it claims that: reality is a web of
communal relationships, and we can know reality only by being in community with it. He further
states that: we know reality only by being in community with it ourselves. How can one human
being know something about another... without leaving the mark of the knowing self on the thing
known? (This feature) of relational knowing turns our capacity for connectedness into a
strength. As knowers, we no longer need to regret our yearning to connect meaningfully with the
other – nor do we need to ‘overcome’ this ‘liability’ by disconnecting ourselves from the world.
...If we were here merely as observers and not as participants in the world, we would have no
capacity to know.
Palmer describes how a community of truth would invite diversity (diverse viewpoints are
demanded by the manifold mysteries of great things); ambiguity (we understand the inadequacy
of our concepts to embrace the vastness of great things); creative conflict (conflict is required to
correct our biases and prejudices about great things); honesty (to lie about what we have seen
would be to betray the truth of great things); humility (humility is the only lens through which
great things can be seen – and once we have seen them, humility is the only posture possible);
and freedom (tyranny in any form can be overcome only by invoking the grace of great things).
By ‘great things’, Palmer means: the subjects around which the circle of seekers has always
gathered – not the disciplines that study these subjects, not the texts that talk about them, not the
theories that explain them, but the things themselves. He means the genes and ecosystems of
biology, the shapes and colours of music and art, the patterns of history, the materials of
engineering, the symbols of philosophy, the rigour of mathematics, the nuances of human
relationships and the mystery of how things have come to be. Is it possible to gather around the
greatness of things in a community of learning and not reduce their greatness in our attempt to
commune?
Palmer’s language is simple, lucid and accessible. The book is written at various levels. It
provides guidelines for good teaching. It takes the reader on an exploration of his/her own inner
landscape. It speaks of the need for an educational reform that begins with the individual teacher,
who becomes part of a community of truth that evolves into a movement that can challenge and
change the educational thinking at large. This, in turn, informs the practice of the individual
teacher. While the examples quoted in the book are American, it is easy to draw parallels to
one’s local reality. I have read this book on various occasions over the past three years, since I
first decided to teach, and have found it revealing each time. Perhaps that is the nature of great
things – they reveal more of you each time you encounter them.