November 17, 2023
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One of the challenging tasks for the teachers is teaching war and conflict without cultivating a war mindset, directly or indirectly. Whether it is the Israel-Hamas war or extreme political polarization, a complete detachment from these issues, particularly when identities and ideologies are involved, has apparently become difficult. As social science discipline is not as objective as physical science, subjective analyses, often biased, creep in while presenting these developments to students. College campuses have recently witnessed tense debates around these issues. Extreme views have touched almost every aspect of personal and public life, and teachers are no exception. But that should not be the case.
For the ancient Greek teacher-philosophers, teaching was a noble profession. Plato groomed Aristotle as his worthy student despite both diverged on many issues. For Plato, education is not just earning degrees for jobs but it also entails cultivating discipline and character. The teacher exemplifies that character and by their example shows the path to the students. Plato envisioned a school to groom future leaders, who could excel both in philosophy and policy making. Not surprisingly, Plato influenced the founding fathers of America. The Federalist Paper 49 referred to Plato, his philosopher kings, and ‘enlightened reason.’
Coming to our modern times, German sociologist Max Weber in his speech, titled Science as a Vocation, at the University of Munich in 1918, dealt at length with the role of a teacher. Weber made it clear that the teacher must not impose their own position on sociopolitical issues on their students. If a teacher wishes to propagate his personal preferences in the classroom then they must leave teaching and enter politics. He argued that the teacher “fulfils the duty of bringing about self-clarification and a sense of responsibility … he will be the more able to accomplish this, the more conscientiously he avoids the desire personally to impose upon or suggest to his audience his own stand.”
Political scientist David Easton, who played a major role in ‘behavioral’ and ‘post-behavioral’ revolutions in the discipline, made the task of the ‘professional social scientist’, in which one could include teachers teaching social science, clear in this presidential address at the American Political Science Association in 1969. He argued, “… the professional social scientist ought to view himself as committed to the broadest of humane values. These need to be the touchstone that he brings to bear on social issues.” Only with such a larger humane perspective, the teacher can discuss in the class room complex issues such as the Israel-Hamas war or extreme political polarization.
Coming back to the Greek philosopher Plato whose philosophy of education entailed that the teacher does not teach but creates enabling conditions so that the potential in the student comes out and shines. The teacher is a kind of mirror to the student. A teacher can ignite the passion for love of wisdom and peace in a student, and, on the contrary, they can ignite the passion for war and violence in a student. More so, when a teacher teaches impressionable minds, their role is quite important in shaping the thought process of the students, who in their later life contribute to their community and state in various ways.
Classroom is a laboratory in which future leaders in varying fields are shaped. Educator and President of Stanford University, David S. Jordan, wrote in 1924, after a few years of the First World War, “As the history of the future shall be written in the schools of today, it is vital that the teacher lay in the minds of children the foundation of a sane and wholesome background from which to develop international amity and intelligent abhorrence of war.”
Though written about a hundred years ago, the wise counsel of Jordan for the teachers appears so relevant that one could say exactly the same words today. Teachers do not go to a battlefield and stop war, but they can play a powerful role in enabling their students to study war and conflict without developing a war mindset.
