THE CLASSROOM AND THE COMPUTER SCREEN Online Education | Page 4

lessons. Augustine explained the another.” Here lies the root of
principle in his treatise on catechizing: sympathy. The best teachers craft
[We teachers] often feel it
lessons that allow them to enjoy the
very wearisome to go
material vicariously through their
over repeatedly matters
which are
students. If students do
Does the medium allow
thoroughly familiar,
not embrace the lesson
teachers and students
and adapted
(rather) to children.
for themselves, their
to read one another and
If this is the case
teachers miss out on
then react?
with us, then we
should endeavor to
the vicarious
meet them with a
enjoyment they seek. Good teachers
brother’s, a father’s, and
a mother’s love; and, if
will keep at it, searching for ways to
we are once united with
make the lesson grip their students.
them thus in heart, to us
no less than to them will
Thus they read their students
these things seem new.
constantly, alert to signs of the lesson
For so great is the power
of a sympathetic
written upon them. This explains why
disposition of
good teachers place
Augustine believed that
mind, that, as they
are affected while
demands upon their
effective education occurs
we are speaking,
students: because
when teachers and students
and we are
affected while they
teachers cannot
“have their dwelling in one
are learning, we
read students who
another.”
have our dwelling
in each other; and
are inert, they
thus, at one and the same
induce students to digest, perform and
time, they as it were in us
speak what they hear,
display what they are learning. Good
and we in them learn
teachers enjoy knowledge most when
after a certain fashion
they re-experience it through their
what we teach. 4
Augustine believed that effective students’ discoveries. By means of a
education occurs when teachers and student’s performance, a lesson
students “have their dwelling in one becomes new in the eyes of even the
Augustine, “On the Catechizing of the
Uninstructed,” in St. Augustine: On the Holy
Trinity, Doctrinal Treatises, Moral Treatises,
trans. S. D. F. Salmond, vol. 3, The Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, First Series (Grand
Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing
Company, 1956), chap. 12.
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