The Place of Dialogue in Christian Education

Lessons from Plato and Postman: The Place of Dialogue in Christian Education
by Autumn Hinrichs

Socrates, in his educational dialogue, Meno, bases his pedagogical method upon his understanding of human nature. Believing that the soul experiences knowledge of the true forms prior to its embodiment, Socrates explains that this knowledge can be drawn out of a person’s memory through reasonable dialogue in a process that he calls recollection.[1] Another thoughtful educator living many centuries after Socrates suggests a similar pedagogy, but bases it upon an extremely different concept of knowledge and human nature. Neil Postman, in his book Teaching as a Subversive Activity, argues that humans are makers of meaning, and that through language, a student can express the meaning he has projected on the world around him. Therefore, he says, a teacher must engage his students in dialogue to draw out this meaning. What is it that makes dialogue such an effective method, even in the context of thoroughly contrary worldviews? While neither Socrates nor Postman has a perfect understanding of human nature, they both recognized certain truths about the human experience which must be considered in the production of an effective education, whether it be Christian or secular.

Man is a creature who values and is able to grasp meaning. This principle is at the core of both Socrates and Postman’s pedagogical methods, but they hold to polar opposite beliefs about the nature of meaning. Postman locates meaning in man, while Socrates locates it in the forms. Postman’s view of meaning may be summed up in his statement that, “we do not ‘get’ meaning from things, we assign meaning.”[2] As the maker of meaning, man is “at the center of the universe.”[3] Socrates’ man, on the other hand, is far from being at the center of the universe or the source of meaning. Rather, meaning is found in the forms, which the immortal human soul has seen before entering the body, and which a person must endeavor to recall through searching and learning.[4] Whatever the source of meaning is, both Socrates and Postman help their students access it by means of dialogue. In both cases, dialogue is successful as a pedagogical method because it guides students to meaningful questions and enables them to hone and express their thoughts through the art of articulation.

The Christian worldview is much more akin to that of Socrates than of Postman: humans get truth; they don’t assign it. Therefore, a Christian pedagogy ought to draw more from Socrates than from Postman, but this is not to say Postman’s pedagogy is thoroughly unuseful. Postman presents dialogue as a way of discerning relevance, by which he means that which is truly of interest for the student. He writes that a “teacher cannot always project himself into the perspective of his students, and dare not assume that his perception of reality is necessarily shared by them.” [5] Postman held that “man is an island,” and therefore, each man must ultimately pursue his own sense of meaning. It is true that a teacher must seek to understand the perspectives of his students because he can only be effective when he understands what they care about. It must be noted, however, that this understanding is not the only purpose of dialogue. Socrates’ worldview enables a teacher to use dialogue not merely to draw out the thoughts of the student, but to relate those thoughts to the reasonable reality of the outside world. Hence, he asks his students questions that expose their ignorance and make them wonder about things. By this method, he stirs up an interest in the learner that is born not only from the student’s own self, but from the mystery of the knowledge which has hitherto alluded him. In this way, Socrates opens his students’ eyes to meaningful topics of inquiry that ought to be considered because they are good in themselves, not merely because the student takes personal interest in them.

A Christian pedagogy will help students desire to learn both by understanding (as Postman recommends) where the student is at in his thinking and questioning, and by guiding the student to important questions he had not yet thought of, as demonstrated by Socrates. Contrary to Postman’s claim, Christianity dictates that man is not an island: he has access to eternally objective truths. Lewis gets at this concept in his discussion of objective value, which is “the Way the universe goes.” “It is also the Way,” he writes, “in which every man should tread in imitation of that cosmic and super cosmic progression, conforming all activities to that great exemplar.”[6] Because men are not islands, they can assist one another in conforming to the great cosmic Way, which is the ultimate source of meaning. The dialectical method of Socrates is an effective way to do this.
In addition to producing meaningful content for education, dialogue also serves as an effective method for helping students to think well and grow in understanding. Postman advocates a “language-centered” education because it is through language which men attribute meaning to things.[7] While Postman’s reasons for this method are incompatible with a Christian worldview, the method itself is not. Language is a significant means by which humans grasp reality and articulate ideas to themselves and to others. Melanchthon, in his oration, “Praise of Eloquence,” emphasizes the significance of speaking well because we “represent the sentiment of our mind by speech.”[8] A conversation-based pedagogy requires a student to do just that: to externalize his ideas by expressing them in verbal form. This process entails thinking through his ideas, clarifying them, and organizing them in a sensible way through words. As a result, a student increases his ability to think critically and deepens his grasp on the meaning of things.

God has created man with the capacities of reason and speech in order that we might know and express His truth. Dialogue is an excellent method of helping one another grow in understanding of the objective reality of God and his creation. The uniquely Christian aspect of dialogue is that enables growth and learning to occur in the context of human relationships. As we dialogue, we are not only growing in knowledge; we are communicating truth with another human soul.

Footnotes


[1] Plato Meno.
[2] Postman 99.
[3] Ibid., 98.
[4] Plato Meno 81.c-d.
[5] Postman 60
[6] C. S. Lewis, Abolition of Man, 18.
[7] Postman 102.
[8] Melanchthon “Praise of Eloquence.”

Mrs. Piggle Wiggle
by Betty MacDonald
Report by Jonathan Hinrichs

Who was Mrs. Piggle Wiggle? Mrs. Piggle Wiggle was someone whom everybody liked. She was different from everybody. Like she had a house that was built upside down. Also, she always had holes in her back yard because all the boys were trying to find the lost treasure that her husband had buried. She always had flowers in her front yard. People were always pretending they had a campfire on the floor in the house, because her living room had a really long chandelier. Everybody would pretend like they were cowboys or Indians when they were at her house. She could do stuff for kids to help them listen to their parents.
One time she helped a little boy eat more. She did this by letting the boy have really little amounts of food. The boy grew very weak. So he listened to his mom and ate the amount of food he was told.
Another time there was a girl who never wanted to take a bath. One morning her mother told her take a bath and she screamed at the top of her lungs “I don’t want to”. Finally she grew so dirty that she went out to get the mail and the mailman screamed because she was so dirty and she didn’t have her hair brushed. Then one morning she went into eat breakfast and said “Addy, ould you ggget a ink of ater, ease?” (That says, “Daddy, could you get a drink of water please?) Her mom and dad never let people see her because she was so dirty.
Finally one morning she had radishes growing out of her. She said to her mom and dad, “Ould I ake a bath?” She said it so clearly that it broke some of the dirt on her cheek. She never, ever wanted to be dirty again.
There were other cures like the fighter-quallers cure, and the never-want-to-go-to-bedders cure, the selfishness cure, and the won’t pick upper toys cure, and the answer-backer cure. Mrs. Piggle Wiggle always knew what to do to help children do the right thing.

Pilgrims

The Landing of the Pilgrims
by James Daugherty
Report by J.J. Hinrichs

The pilgrims were separatists. Separatists means they were separating from the church of England. The church of England was adding things into the Bible and the separatists did not want things added to the Bible. They were living in England and they were being threatened by being put in prison so they had to flee. They went to Holland and then they were called pilgrims.

While the pilgrims were living in Holland, they lived in an area called “Stink Alley.” They lived there because they did not have a lot of money and they did not have very good jobs.

Then some of their daughters married some of the Holland boys and some of their boys joined the Holland army. All of the boys and girls were forgetting the ways of England. The parents wanted to move because they did not want the children to forget the English ways.

They decided to go to America, but they did not have enough money. They decided to get the Mayflower to sail them to the New World. When they were sailing one of the sailors said that he hoped to throw half of the pilgrims over but within a few days he died. Everyone thought it was God’s hand. No one else got a sickness.

When the pilgrims landed they started exploring and found a graveyard of the Indians. They found a man that had yellow hair and they did not know if he was a chief or a lost sailor. They also found mounds of corn. They found pots and a bunch of stuff.

Then the pilgrims built a storage house where they put the sick and the food. Next they built some houses on the hillside and finally they built a fortress that was 12 feet high all around the houses.

There was a terrible sickness and they got really cold from the winter. Only nine women survived. The ones that were still sick but could still walk had to go work on the storage house. They did not have a lot of food. They had to give only one scoop of corn for each person.

One day Squanto came and he taught them how to plant corn, stomp on the ground at the beach and eels would come up (which doesn’t work anymore). Squanto had a friend named Samoset they could both speak English. Samoset brought Chief Massasoit to do the peace pipe with William Bradford. He brought ninety other braves with him. The woman were afraid to feed this many. Samoset fixed it, he told his braves to go into the woods and bring back four other deer. They also ate lobster, clams, duck, goose, and of course turkey. It became a barbecue.

Many things happened, like Squanto died. Some of the Indians planned war once against the pilgrims, there was a rattlesnake skin that had a bunch of colors on it and it was filled with arrows. The pilgrims filled it with bullets and sent it back.

Once they had a drought and they prayed for eight hours and then it began to rain lightly with no wind. The pilgrims praised God.

Sarah, Plain and Tall

Sarah, Plain and Tall
by Patricia MacLachlan
Report by Jonathan Hinrichs

There was a father with two children, Anna and Caleb. Their mother had a son, Caleb, then she died the next day. So Caleb never had a mom. They always wanted a mom.

Once there was a man who advertised for a wife and he got one. So that’s what Caleb and Anna’s dad did.

Then a woman wrote a letter to them and said, “I do not have a husband. I live by the beach. My name is Sarah and I am plain and tall.”

Then they wrote letters back and forth. Then one day she wrote a letter that said, “I will come. I have a yellow bonnet and I am plain and tall.” She said she would be at the train station.

The day that Sarah came, papa went to the train station. Caleb and Anna first saw dust in the passage. Then they went to the wagon and out came Sarah and she came with her own things. Then they wondered if she would be nice and she was.
Sarah brought many special things with her. She gave some of them to the children. Like a shell that you could hear the ocean in. And a stone that was white and very round. She also brought her gray cat named Seal. Seal was gray and white just like the seals. Sarah told them that she would miss the ocean.

They went through a lot of hard times. Like one time they went through a kind of storm that was really bad and they had to stay in the barn and the house almost fell but it didn’t.

Caleb always asked Sarah if she brought some of the sea. One day she brought gray, blue and green pencils, and candles. She said to their father Jacob that they would get married in the summer.

Snakes

Snakes, Snakes, Snakes
by Jonathan Hinrichs

Snakes are very powerful reptiles. A reptile is cold blooded which means it needs to get heat from the sun because it doesn’t make its own heat.

Snakes can eat things much bigger than their head. Because their jaw unhooks and their teeth only go backwards it helps them to suck the prey into their mouth. We would be able to eat a whole watermelon if we could eat like a snake.

The way God designed a snake they don’t have stretchable skin like us. So they have to shed their skin when they grow out of it.

Snakes have to eat just like people. They’re more like the second on the food chain because they are good at killing things but other animals can eat them, like road runners, raccoons and hawks.

Snakes are powerful but don’t be afraid!

The Princess and the Pea

The Pea Princess
From Abbie-gail

One day a princess went knock, knock at the door. Then a king opened the door and a beautiful princess said that her hair was all wet and her shoes were all wet and her dress was wet and all torn from the rain. The queen put a little, little pea and a lot of covers right into a bed for the princess. Then they said, “Here is a bed for you.” She stayed awake because her feeled something really tough. Then everyone said, “Why it’s a princess!” Then she married the prince.

The Bears on Hemlock Mountain

The Bears on Hemlock Mountain
By Alice Dalgliesh
Report by Jonathan Hinrichs

Once there was a boy named Jonathan. His momma told him to go over this mountain named Hemlock mountain to get a pot. So one day he did go to his aunt’s to get this big iron pot.

Some people said there were bears on Hemlock mountain, but his mother didn’t really think there were any bears.

His mother, when he was out of sight, started worrying and started baking cookies. She found herself saying a pattern in her mind: There are no bears on Hemlock mountain, no bears at all. No bears. No bears. No bears at all.

Jonathan got to the top of Hemlock mountain and he started munching on a cookie and threw out a carrot and bread crumbs for the rabbits and birds. And he threw out nuts for the squirrels. Then he started saying the same pattern as his mom: There are no bears on Hemlock mountain, no bears at all. No bears. No bears. No bears at all.

Then it started getting later and he started trudging down the mountain. Then he got to his Aunt Emma’s house and rang the brass door knocker. His Aunt Emma started coming to the door and then she opened it and said, “Goodness sakes Jonathan, why did you come here?” Then she let Jonathan in and she wondered why Jonathan had come. Then she asked if Jonathan would like some cookies. Jonathan started eating cookies and drinking milk and then fell fast asleep.

When he woke up he said goodbye and put on his muffler. When he had gone quite a ways he felt quite silly about himself because he had forgotten the iron pot. He started back and rang the brass door knocker again and his Aunt Emma opened the door and asked him what he had come here for. “My mother wants to use the iron pot.” Then she gave him the iron pot.

He started going home and when he got to the top of Hemlock mountain he got tired and sat on the big iron pot. Then he heard a big heavy Crunch, crunch, crunch. He started saying to himself right now, which was quite silly to say right now: There are no bears on Hemlock mountain, no bears at all. No bears. No bears. No bears at all.

Then the bears got closer and closer and he got under the pot so he had a little hide out. He started wondering if anyone was looking for him. He heard a crunch, crunch, crunch. He heard his father say, “Jonathan” he said, “Hello Pa!” Then he heard a voice say “Hello Jonathan!!!” The bears got tired of this and trudged away.

His father and uncles got to him and Jonahtan said, “There ARE bears on Hemlock mountain. There ARE bears on Hemlock mountain.” His father said, “Nonsense”. Then they saw the footprints in the snow. All the rest of his uncles went to look for the bears. Jonathan and his father heard a bang and Jonathan felt like they were going to have bear meat for dinner.