Life around Us

Learn from all

My teacher encourages us to learn from all, teachers and students alike. Teachers are just formalised labels by institutions such as colleges, universities, and martial art schools. Students are those that these teachers serve because without the students, there is no one to teach.

It’s good to say all these. But sometimes, that’s all that happens - saying. The doing part is often met with conflicting messages.

There’s a very old Chinese saying,

三人行，必有我师。

Translated as, for every 3 person walking together, there’s bound to be a teacher to me, i.e. for a very long time, we have recognised that teachers are everywhere. So what keeps them from appearing to you and me?

I think there are 2 main reasons - our own perception, and the environment we are in.

Our own perception

We only learn what we perceive. If we can’t perceive it, we can’t learn it. If we close our minds to the possibility of learning from everyone, we won’t be able to learn from them. This may happen if you just dislike the person for any reason, or if you think you are already superior, or if the environment you’re in does not promote such perception, which brings us to the next point…

The environment we are in

A teacher can promote or guide the class to be more receptive to other students. However, if the teacher himself does not allow “the opportunity to learn from others” to flourish, all will be lost. We may hear a teacher lecture first about the importance of learning from others, but then when the teacher starts to point out the mistakes of students at annoyingly frequent intervals, it’ll impede the ability of students to see those mistakes for themselves, and hence will not be able to learn from others.

It is tough to preach the fine line of guiding and yet not appear too prescriptive, especially when different stages of life require different kinds of teaching. So, this is still all talk. If you find yourself or your teacher who’s already walking the talk, you’ve just found yourself a great gift.

p/s: It’s quite refreshing to hear a teacher’s voice on this, that a teacher’s greatest gift to a student is to teach them how to understand teachers and teaching. Please read this post from The Guru Handbook for more details.

© 2008 shang lee . com.