Learn to Teach

Still with Avery Dulles (Models of Church), his first model is of the Church as Institution. Key activities in an institutional Church are, he says: teaching, sanctifying, and governing. He is careful to distinguish between a Church being institutional and institutionalist. The institutional Church is by its structure well placed to bring people together in mission. The institutionalist Church may well abuse its power.

For example, the teachings of an institutionalist Church may focus on its doctrine, handed down 'apostolically' as 'truth'. Indeed there might well be pressure on theologians in such a church to reverse-engineer interpretation of Scripture to match what clerics are saying.

Some people are perhaps already suspicious of teachers because of past experiences, not least that most of us meet those of the teaching profession in the authority-laden atmosphere of a school. In which case, if we use the insitutional model of church to analyse an ecclesial community we may 'discover' institutionalist tendencies such as didactic teaching that aren't really present, and thus disparage all the Church's educational activities. How can we avoid this?

In the closing pages of The Practice of History, G R Elton claims that there are three basic methods of teaching: the lecture, the seminar, and the tutorial. Yet to focus on these three methods is to avoid the two ideas in which Elton enfolds them. Firstly, teaching is always a two-way process (though Elton in the 1960s was dubious of any non-US student's ability or willingness to question a lecturer). Secondly, teaching is merely an adjunct to the work of a scholar, and almost a second-fiddle activity at that.

I interpret Elton's view as presenting teaching as a feedback mechanism. To teach is to give oneself a sounding board for ideas. It also has a democratic (non-institutionalist) feel about it, for the feedback comes about through exposing ideas to neophytes as much as to the scrutiny of peers or powers-that-be.

This seems like a healthy way to view teaching in the Church. Teaching in this form should surely be an activity of the exilic community?