The Socratic Oath: First, do not prevent learning.
Prologue The Socratic Oath What if teachers had their own Hippocratic Oath?
F
riday morning. Bocos Del Toro, Panama. Neil set out from the dock at Bahia Honda in a panga halffilled with grinning, coffee, indigenous kids. They headed out to a distant point where the surf breaks across a long, clean punta. Neil was a surfer of astonishing ability, taking off in critical spots, and moving up and down the face of the wave with precision while generating impossible acceleration. As such, he knew this point like few others. All the way along, the shorelines were covered in impenetrably thick, green mangroves. Steering closer to shore, they eventually began to notice occasional dark spaces amidst the wiry and gnarled banks and, closer still, they appeared as tiny, green, creek mouths; as slight inlets big enough for a few dugout canoes. And closer still, a few little ones running and chasing one another and grinning with delight as they flipped off the end of a dock. The Ngรถbe kids of the Bahia Honda on the northeastern corner of Panama were waiting for a ride to school. Behind the mangroves protecting the shore, with machetes, the Ngรถbe had hacked thatched-roof, stilt houses, and extended family clearings of usually less than
2 — Fearless Teaching
one hectare into the bush. Surrounding each clearing was wild and twisting, tropical overgrowth reaching to a high canopy and the best way you could describe this is with a word that some surely think is outmoded: jungle. Comical sounds floated out at various times of the day and it was hard to tell the forest canopy sounds of the monkeys from the birds or cicadas. Everything, including eight-foot leaves and nearly microscopic bugs thrived in this wild. Savage rains. Some strawberry poison dart frogs crawled around the base of a ficus tree, while a three-toed sloth hung from its top branch. Cocoa and cinnamon grew wild. In the Bahia Honda even the little ones began learning the skills of hand fishing. At five-years-old they learned kayaking, at seven, machetes. At the next stop, Neil learned that the older, elementary school-aged children were not coming that day. Their two teachers were to be attending a government meeting . . . No matter, it would have been a rough ride for many in the rain, especially for those who paddled their dugouts to school.
He and his students arrived at school with a few preschoolers and, in the corner gathering area, a group of mostly female, pre-med students from Yale and Stonybrook, was convened. They were getting instructions for vaccinating the locals and dispensing vitamins and medication to ward off parasites. Seeing opportunity, a couple of them wandered into the schoolroom to show the little ones some medical tools. The rain was clattering down so hard on the metal roof that it was hard to hear anything else. Even so, the kids were captivated. A visitor watched from the teacher’s desk and tried to take notes but termites were excavating the wood all over the writing surface and leaving piles of sawdust.
Prologue — 3
One co-ed pre-med student had a song about washing hands and everyone sang along. The ancient physicians’ Hippocratic Oath was playing out before their eyes, and all these students, from preschool to pre-med, were filled with purity of intention: “First, do no harm,” the oath implores. What if not just physicians, but global aid teachers, inner city teachers, and every teacher on Earth could understand this oath? This would be the Socratic Oath: “First listen. Observe. Prevent no learning.” Curiosity about our students will always provide greater wisdom than we can ever bring in. This philosophy restores our profession to its noble roots, and distinguishes the teacher from the trainer. As Socrates and every great teacher since has implicitly understood: teaching is the study of the student. This is where we must always start. Behind the mangroves, the elders don’t know much about the alphabet. They can only stand by in faith as their indigenous languages give way to Spanish, and even English as a third language. Worldwide, most of our students, and their parents, have little or no control over the education that is delivered to them. Down in Bahia Honda, Neil wanted to do what he could to connect this community, so that they in turn could teach themselves. But, in schools, not just primitive ones, including those across our own country, we have imported a lot of damage to our students by not listening to the communities that support them. What would our teaching in Panama bring to this ancient culture? Do they have some intimation of how incredibly vulnerable they are now that the teachers are here?