Sometimes the subject of teaching is really boring to me. There is a jargon that comes with education, but that comes with any field. Certainly psychology has plenty of it. Words and phrases like "scaffolding" or "ready to learn" seem like they mean something, and they kind of do mean something. It just isn't the sort of something that I am interested in. It is the technocratic language that creates distance between the supposed professional and the client or student or patient. 

  In contrast, any person who has had a good teacher will use words like "warm", "enthusiastic",  

"knowledgeable", and so on. It seems that a good teacher knows the subject well and has it close to the heart. The good teacher is also good at relationships.

   Most students, however, rarely experience the one on one intensity that comes with Zen teaching. That intimacy- and it is a form of intimacy- is still alive in the arts. Music teachers, dance teachers, painting teachers all routinely cultivate this. But why have we lost this in the liberal arts? There are some elite-ish private schools that have this quality, and of course in any school there are gifted students who are cared for like hothouse flowers. But what a shame, what a loss for so many. 

   The technocratic language obscures an awareness of the relationship, and instead focuses on methods of knowledge delivery, rather like a better hypodermic or trans-dermal patch. It also prevents an acknowledgement of how much the student brings to the relationship: her experiences, her perspectives, her abilities. What I find so compelling about Zen practice is its absolute insistence that everything important and essential is already known by the student. Obviously, my students may not know a given martial arts move or be able to follow a snaking and omnivorous Miltonic Simile. 

   I believe, however, that a dynamic teacher creates an experience in the classroom- a performance, an experiment, a conversation- that the student than makes his own. There is no reason to separate the subject being considered from the "techniques" being deployed in the classroom. These are unitary from a student's perspective, and the student's perspective must always be foremost in a teacher's mind. Much like the performer must at once be the character and intuit the viewer's sensibility. In a poor teacher, these things are considered serially, if at all.

   We do teach, and do impart important knowledge. But none of it matters unless the student is fully present.