Tag Archives: teaching

Impermanent & Irreplaceable? New Tricycle Article Highlights

There’s a new Tricycle article titled Education and Work that call outs the false messages we receive from both educations systems and corporate bureaucracy. Here are a few of the very provocative points made:

  • Education turns human beings into commodities.
  • People should exist not as interchangeable parts of an economic machine
  • When people are alone, they’re not so bad. However, when a group forms, paralysis occurs; people become totally foolish and cannot distinguish good from bad. 
  • People live relying on groups and organizations, drifting along in them like floating weeds without roots.
  • “An organization man is an employee, especially of a large corporation, who has adapted so completely to what is expected in attitudes, ideas, behavior, etc., by the corporation as to have lost a sense of personal identity or independence.”
  • Suffering arises from our narrow concept of I, combined with our insatiable greed.

Check out the full article at the link provided below. I’d enjoy hearing your thoughts on this assessments of modern-day society.

Teachers, Saviors and Personal Choice

My first father-in-law taught me how to fly fish. He never used the quote, “Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day; teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime.” He did, however, patiently offer suggestions and examples of how to do something if I was really interested in learning. No pressure, no expectations, just answering questions and role-modeling techniques. Maybe he was communicating nonverbally, “Come follow me, or don’t, it’s your choice.”

Two articles crossed my path today. Perhaps they will be as provocative for you as they were for me.

They are:

“Maimonides, a renowned philosopher and scholar, once wisely said, ‘Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day; teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime.’ This timeless quote encapsulates the profound notion that providing immediate help to someone may alleviate their immediate needs but teaching them the skills to become self-sufficient will empower them for a lifetime.”  http://www.socratic-method.com/quote-meanings-and-interpretations/maimonides-give-a-man-a-fish-and-you-feed-him-for-a-day-teach-a-man-to-fish-and-you-feed-him-for-a-lifetime

When one is deluded, one thinks teachers take you, but when one has awakened, one realizes that one crosses over by oneself.” tricycle.org/article/nelson-foster-chan-buddhism/

High Coo – Oct 5 – World Teachers’ Day

Lao Tzu – Author of Tao Te Ching
https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/2622245.Lao_Tzu

Since 1994, October 5 has been a day for commemorating teachers. Today we focus on “appreciating, assessing and improving the educators of the world.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Teachers’_Day

As the 27th verse of the Tao Te Ching reminds us:

“These are the paths to enlightenment. Those who arrive at their destination teach those who are still on the path, while those still on the path are sources of wisdom for their teachers.” See Tao Te Ching – A New Translation & Commentary by Ralph Alan Dale (c) 2002, p.55

A humble haiku response: World Teachers’ Day

We learn then we teach

consciously or not – our life

is our lesson plan

What My Teachers Taught Me About Teaching – Edutopia