I trained to be a teacher and, once a teacher, always a
teacher. This one started when yesterday, Monday, 14 January 2019, my wife Ampy
asked me to print the image of "Teaching is a work of heart,"
pointing out the obvious that it is a work of pun, from "work of
art." That is actually like saying, "Teaching is a work of the head
and the heart."
After that, I thought about it some more and came up with my
"The 4 H of Education" that includes the Head, Heart, Hand, and Help.
You need the Head to think, the Heart to feel, the Hand to work, and the Help
to go on.
Today, at Facebook, I come across the post of Tao & Zen
of the Dalai Lama and his umbrella saying, "We need an education of the
heart." It turns out that this is an essay by Tenzin Gyatso who is the 14th
Dalai Lama, at the Los Angeles Times
written last year yet (13 November 2017, latimes.com).
Nonetheless, if you ask me as a teacher, education is for life.
The Head
is for thinking both critically and creatively. The Dalai Lama says:
At present our
educational systems are oriented mainly toward material values and training
one’s understanding. But reality teaches us that we do not come to reason
through understanding alone. We should place greater emphasis on inner values.
Which brings us to:
The Heart,
which I say is for Love, for the inner values. Now, my definition of Love is
all of Romans 12, all 386 words of that chapter of St Paul's Letters to the
Romans, in the New Revised Standard Version of the Bible, in which the last
verse says, "Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good."
The Hand
is for Doing Work. This has to do with skills, Beginner, Amateur or
Professional. With our hands, we learn to do, even as we do what we have
already learned.
The Help is for assistance – we always
need the help of other people. The Dalai Lama says:
The new reality is that everyone is interdependent with everyone else.
The United States is a leading nation of the free world. For this reason, I
call on its president to think more about global-level issues. There are no
national boundaries for climate protection or the global economy. No religious
boundaries, either. The time has come to understand that we are the same human
beings on this planet. Whether we want to or not, we must coexist.
The everyday reality is also
that people are killing people and people want to subvert the existing order.
Now:
"How do you coexist
with evil?"
I have been trying to ask that
unasked question myself and, the other day, Sunday, 13 January 2019, on
Facebook I came across the same sharing of Susan Gomez and Lina Concepcion Luna
Ilag of Nepthalie R Gonzales' long-titled post on where evil spreads, what are
we supposed to do that is good?
That is my next QuickBytes essay!517
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