Customer Reviews

The Courage to Teach: Exploring the Inner Landscape of a Teacher's Life

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In many ways, it is itself an act of courage to read this book. Mr. Palmer has taken the rare, difficult task of probing to the heart of the learning experience and seeks to reveal its essence for any teacher willing to explore with him. In this task--like a good teacher--he asks more questions than he answers and he is concerned in discovering the process and the means of learning and teaching.

For me, what lingers after finishing the short book are two key concepts his identifies: identity and integrity. For each individual teacher, the need to have some balanced perspective of self-identity becomes paramount. Do I teach to peddle my agenda? Do I teach in order to be the 'big fish in a little pond'? Do I teach because I like the stage? Or, Do I teach in order to fulfill an inner yearning, even sadness?. Next, the balance of integrity must center a good teacher. Do I seek fairness among my students? Do I build good habits of discipline? Do I live justly? Eschew competition? Seek first of all to teach meaning, itself a subject-centered approach?

See? These are the kinds of questions that echo in my mind after reading The Courage To Teach. I particularly like what Mr. Palmer had to say regarding fear, teaching from fear, and hiding among our fears while facing them. Beauty lies in the paradox.

Now, I look for those critical moments in teaching for what they are. I strive to find my identity in my students' faces; I am challenged to live with integrity in my heart AND in my mind.

No student of educational reform should be without this book.

One more thing: if nothing else, read this book for the research and precious quotes that Mr. Palmer uses. His endnotes are worth the price alone.

What made us teachers in the first place? Palmer asks. We fell in love with a subject that spoke to us deeply and personally. Why does that intial inspiration so often leave us, and the daily grind of the job take its place? Palmer tries to restore that depth, that bright inspiration that got us going as teachers in the first place. It will take courage, he points out, for us teachers to speak and act from that deep place where our subject inspires us; but for our students' sake, and for the sake of our own souls, we must take that courage. His story on page 59 of the shop teacher who finally grasped the courage to be honest with his principal is one of the most heartening stories I've ever read. The entire book speaks powerfully to both the mind and heart of those of us who teach. And it also gives news of a national movement forming to bring teachers into dialogue with each other about the spiritual dimensions of their teaching. This is a much-needed book, one that inspires teachers to hope and to dare to be fully human in their living and their teaching.

Though not an easy book to read, as a teacher of some thirty years I find this book to be challenging, inspiring and definitely thought-provoking. Too often we as teachers rely on the tried and true and as a result become somewhat stale. Mr. Palmer is challenging us to reexamine not only our teaching styles but ourselves as teachers. I shall read it through time and again and would definitely recommend it to anyone who has the heart and soul of a teacher.

"The Courage to Teach" should be read again and again. It invokes new insights into your teaching career every time at various points in your life. The concepts are inspiring, and the conclusions honest.

If I have any complaints, it's that at times in the book, the language became a bit thick and abstract, losing the reader in extensive passages that might need to be reread several times to fully understand. For example, a sentence from page 105 reads:

"In rejecting the objectivist model, I have not embraced a relativism that reduces truth to whatever the community decides, for the community of truth includes a transcendent dimension of truth-knowing and truth-telling that takes us beyond relativism and absolutism alike."

To be fair, this quote is taken out of context, and I know that the book is not meant to be read like a pleasure novel... it's much deeper and more though-provoking than that. It's a real gem when Palmer describes examples of his points from classroom experiences, but I found myself choking on the pages of abstract language separating these examples. It took me longer than expected to finish.

Despite my minor misgivings, I highly recommend the book... especially to teachers. It'll be a permanent fixture on my bookshelf for years.

My professional reading group is currently reading and journaling about The Courage To Teach. We have read many books about teaching and learning together, but Palmer's book brings us to our knees. As we focus on "Who" we are as educators, we are forced to soulfully search our spirits for that which makes us willing to greet each day in the classroom. We unanimously agree that Palmer's book should be required reading for every teacher in America. We are finding ourselves again.

The front cover of `The Courage to Teach,' Parker J. Palmer's spiritual exploration of teaching, is a painting of a sheer cliff overlooking an expansive lake. Birds mount up from the shores, and ribbony waterfalls pour down the rock face. Overhead, though out of the picture, the sun breaks through the clouds, casting a dusky but revelatory glow over the whole scene. It would be an appropriate metaphor for the book except for one problem - which metaphor? The joy of sunshine after the rain? The freedom of a bird in flight? The lyrical power of a waterfall?

So it is with A Courage to Teach. The picture that emerges is a richly toned portrait of `the inner landscape of a teacher's life' (as the cover advertises), but the reader is never quite sure where to focus. Perhaps this is Palmer's intention. It is a mystical book, reminiscent of Richard Bach's Jonathan Livingston Seagull or some other philosophical meandering, from which one can never quite glean a specific thesis. The fact that each chapter starts with a poetry excerpt is revealing, as is one reviewer's quote: `This book is good news ... for all of us who are committed to the healing of our world.' Whatever that means, it sure sounds nice - can I join? Snide remarks aside, the book is inspiring at its best and well-meaning but muddled at its worst.

Just to add a few comments on various sections of the book...

Palmer makes many good points, but much of the time, he wanders from truism to proverb and back again, sounding somewhat like a New Age self-help book. `You need only claim the events of your life to make yourself yours.' `The voice of the inward teacher reminds me of my truth as I negotiate the force field of my life.' Huh?

The section about bringing paradoxes back into education, however, is wonderful! It seems to speak directly to the United States, where a childish either-or mentality prevails as we live in the shadow of 9/11/2001. How much more might we have achieved as a nation, both at home and abroad, in these last three-odd years had we not been so infatuated with our leaders' black-and-white worldview?

The chapter on a 'community of truth' hits a few high notes, but the conclusion finds Palmer flailing at mysticism, as he descends into pseudo-theology to relate education and spirituality: `The sacred [is] the mysterium tremendum, the numinous energy at the heart of reality.' He would be better off following the example of Annie Dillard, whom he quotes more than once, but whose writing has far more clarity and power. Either call it God or don't.

I was quite inspired, though, by the idea of a `clearness committee,' whereby a group of four or five peers sits down with a teacher who needs help with a particular issue. These peers have a simple job - infuriatingly simple. They must not, under any circumstances, offer advice on whom to consult, which books to read, what technique to try, or the like; they are charged to ask only `real questions' - those that assume nothing and have no hidden agendas or intimations behind them. The group then spend several consecutive hours in unhurried discussion of the issue, focusing complete attention on the person at the centre. Palmer notes (and I can attest from marital experience) that this not only helps teachers teach better - perhaps they have figured out how to `negotiate the force field'? - but also works wonders on life in general. People who have participated in clearness committees tend to be more caring, patient listeners towards their family, and they tend to think more instinctively about the other person's self-worth and point of view before their own.

Though Palmer does include a proper set of endnotes and even an index, there is scant wrapping up in `The Courage to Teach.' The reader is subliminally encouraged to see the limitless possibilities of `healing the world,' and the book simply ends - or perhaps it doesn't. One cannot quite be sure. However, the effect of the last chapter is rather powerful, using the story of Rosa Parks to exemplify the repercussions of deciding to live an `undivided life.'

I am a teacher (of English as a second language), and I would give this book a qualified recommendation. Read it, plow through it, but don't expect your life to be changed.

Remarkable teachers, Palmer believes, are a pragmatic lot who do whatever it takes and often fail. Along the way they may find themselves begging, cajoling, and expressing their own gratitude, fearfulness, and ignorance. All of them eschew mere technique and aspire to make their teaching an intensely spiritual experience: they allow teaching to transform their innermost selves. Palmer's challenge to each educator is to acknowledge that knowing one's students and knowing one's subject requires the deepest self-knowledge. What is required is nothing less than an unflinching commitment to live out in the classroom a painful Socratic examination of one's own life.

This indeed requires a courageous willingness to make oneself vulnerable. But what exactly is involved, and what is the payoff? Thankfully, Palmer's analysis avoids the fuzzy metaphors (and half-baked metaphysics) that spoil many contemporary "new age" visions of the role of spirituality in public life. Palmer, who was trained in philosophy, religion, and sociology, provides many specific examples. His most conventional claim is that modelling Socratic examination allows teachers to inspire their students to construct deeply fulfilling lives. He also argues that a Socratic entanglement of a teacher with her subject causes a passionate engagement more helpful than any bureaucrat's assessment instrument. Palmer draws on anecdotes--from kindergarten teachers to medical school professors, from shop teachers to physicists--to make his case. These anecdotes provide constructive solutions to many of the most painful problems teachers face and make plausible Palmer's vision of the intellectual, emotional, and spiritual depths of a life committed to teaching and learning.

The Courage to Teach is likely to become a classic because it offers inspiration, constructive ways to think about teaching and ourselves as teachers, guidelines for engaging in professional conversations about teaching, brilliant and novel insights -- all in beautiful prose laced with humor and good stories. If the ideas in this book were embraced by the profession, they would revolutionize the classroom and improve the lives of both students and teachers. Palmer has thought deeply and well about the teaching life and created a book with soul. I plan to reread it.

I would recommend this book for any who are setting out to teach, and for those now teaching, especially in the public schools. Palmer's perspective can be of great help to those seeking to refound public education as a postmodern spiritual quest. In other words, as authentic learning rather than mere schooling. Such a perspective may also help public school teachers to respond with a transformative vision to the narrow agenda of those who would reform edcation with mere convention or sectarianism.

This book was required reading in an education course I took. I am so glad that it was. It helped me embrace the contradictions inherent in my profession. So many educators and politicians spend so much time trying to "choose sides" between philosophies that are contradictory, but not necessarily mutually exclusive. I am now much more comfortable with my decisions as a teacher. Reading this book helped me stop being afraid. Most of the time, I prefer books that give specific strategies and techniques to use in the classroom, but without those, this book was definitely worth reading.