Near the middle of his classic book, To Know As We Are Known, Parker Palmer points to the fourth century desert fathers and mothers as exemplar teachers. This narrative of Abba (Father) Felix provides one such educational model:
Some brothers ... went to see Abba Felix and they begged him to say a word to them. But the old man kept silence. After they had asked for a long time he said to them, "You wish to hear a word?" They said, "Yes, abba." Then the old man said to them, "There are no more words nowadays. When the brothers used to consult the old men and when they did what was said to them, God showed them how to speak. But now, since they ask without doing that which they hear, God has withdrawn the grace of the word from the old men and they do not find anything to say, since there are no longer any who carry their words out." Hearing this, the brothers groaned, saying, "Pray for us, abba." (Taken from Ward, The Desert Christian, p. 242).
Abba Felix describes the consequences of learning without doing, a practice that seems commonplace in today's educational systems. I wonder what might happen if educators relied less on words to teach and more on modelling through action.
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