Preaching and teaching

Gary Younge notes that Martin Luther King’s ‘I have a dream’ speech truly arrived when he put aside the script and extemporized. And it worked – sort of. It has gone down in history but it was vague enough that zealot’s of many colors make favorable references to it.

In terms of methodology the speech could be seen as an example of ‘flow’. He let the unconscious have its own way. And it came up trumps. But this is not magic. It is not a case of something from nothing. Over many years he had built up his preaching skills – he knew how to engage and excite an audience. His genius lay in his trusting his finely tuned inner forces to rise to that momentous occasion. This is similar to inspirational teaching.

Preaching and teaching. Engage and excite.

In the South Sudan I taught Biology with enthusiasm because I found it to be a fascinating and relevant subject. Most of the kids were from rural villages and they were intimately familiar with the benefits and dangers of the physical environment. Some of their indigenous technical knowledge (ITK) was ‘true’ and some was not. For example it was commonly believed that if a woman eats boiled eggs when pregnant the baby will be born without hair. My teaching from the scientific point of view was to ask, “Is that true, how can we be sure? What are the causes and effects? Show me the evidence!” The kid’s nickname for me was ‘Mr nothing comes from nothing’.

I was in the Sudan in the early 80s and had already been teaching since the early 70s in Scotland, Jamaica and Zambia. There was thus considerable cross cultural experience under my belt and thus expertise to underlie my heartfelt enthusiasm. There is the apocryphal tale of students dodging their other dull classes and sitting in on my energetic biology ones.

The Sudan School Certificate biology curriculum was a mess. I was cobbled together over the years. Most of it was at fairly standard ‘O’ level but there had been later high level insertions especially concerning health. The sections of ecology and genetics were straight lifts from the first year University of Cairo curricula.

The official biology textbook was in Arabic. It contained several errors of fact. But from the examiner’s point of view the correct answer was what it said in the text book. This meant that I had to teach the ‘truth’ but explain that the correct answer for exam purposes was different.

In the end I converted my lesson notes into a 169 page textbook with backup from a 152 page teacher’s guide. This was much appreciated by other biology teachers many of whom were not biology graduates. But lesson plans are like jokes – much hangs in the way you tell them.

But I digress. The underlying issue when facing a communication challenge is whether to give the unconscious its head in ‘Flow’. There is no magic. Nothing comes from nothing. There needs to be a solid basis in experience and expertise.

AND – there is something glorious about creating engagement and excitement. The ‘facilitation of learning’ has the foremost place among contemporary mind shapers but my mind is shaped to keep sight of the good, old fashioned, charismatic preaching and teaching.