Toward a Healthy Teacher-Student Relationship

How does the student-teacher relationship work? What role does the teacher play in students' lives in scripture? Here at EBI? In our culture at large? What does authority of the Bible School teacher look like as compared with the authority of a pastor or elder in a church? Let's explore these topics together over the next few weeks on the education blog.

As people, we have a tendency to worship things and individuals rather than God. Jeremiah 1:16 "I will pronounce My judgments on them concerning all their wickedness, whereby they have forsaken Me and have offered sacrifices to other gods, and worshiped the works of their own hands.

If only all idolatry were easy to spot! 1 John 2:16: reminds us that, “For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life, is not of the Father, but is of the world.” Unfortunately, subtle lies related to the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life can creep into the student-teacher relationship. 

The student-teacher relationship is a contractual one with certain assumed cultural and biblical obligations. There is a certain way to conceptualize the contractual obligations between teachers and students that frames education as a give and take relationship. The teacher gives and the student takes or receives. While this model is not entirely without merit, I personally believe that it tends toward those problems in 1 John 2:16. Accreditation with TRACS is going to push us toward a contractual obligation with students centered around the students' achievement of measurable, predetermined learning objectives. 

At its core, of course, the student–teacher relationship is built on trust. Trust requires transparency. Transparency is achieved when students understand where and how the information being presented to them came about and when the obligations of teachers and students are clear. Just like teachers, students must weigh and evaluate available evidence and come to personal conclusions. Transparency means that teachers admit when they do not know the answer to a question or objection. It also means that teachers admit when their knowledge is incomplete, their evidence is circumstantial or when their opinions are open to interpretation.

Empowerment (the concept that every course should enable students to achieve and demonstrate core competencies related to the discipline, course, or lesson) enhances learning and transparency. On a practical level, this means that we shouldn't be saying as teachers, "students are paying to hear what I have to say about a topic." This sort of mentality about the teacher-student relationship fosters an unhealthy dependency on the teacher rather than the healthy interdependence and independence modeled in scriptural teaching relationships such as the relationship between Paul and Timothy or Jesus and his disciples.

In general, biblically speaking, we want to embrace those teaching practices and standards that reduce the fleshly problems discussed in 1 John 2:16. As humans, we need guard rails and protections against the idolatry that so easily creeps into our lives.

I think the best way to do this is to simply esteem others as higher than ourselves and practice the kind of incarnational ministry that Jesus himself modeled for us. What about you? Do you see the need for guard rails or standards in your teaching relationship that prevents idol worship? How do the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life intersect with teaching? How do you achieve a healthy balance between challenging students with the word of God on the one hand and participating in what God is already doing in their hearts, minds, and lives? What steps or efforts are you making to create transparency and trust in your student relationships? Is it obvious where you got the information from your notes or do you at times pass off other people's information as your own? Are you generally more focused on student learning or on your own teaching? 

Thanks for any and all comments/participation.