Teaching in the Digital World

Psalm 119: 97–103 Learners can know more than their teachers in the sense that they are filled with a sense of God. As God knows all things and is the end all, be all, the learner who realizes this truth is like the Psalmist—wiser than all others.

The educator who, like the Psalmist, also keeps the Word of God with him at all times is actually in the same boat—so it is important to remember that in Psalm 119:97-103 what we are talking about is a spiritual wisdom, not an earthly or academic wisdom. The spiritual wisdom of David, for instance, is what allowed him to be so near to God in the first place—to be after God’s own heart.

That kind of wisdom surpasses all other knowledge because it makes one holy and beautiful to God. In terms of earthly wisdom and understanding, however, the role of the educator is to help students acquire secular knowledge—information that they can use to facilitate their calling in life, whatever it is. So the educator can help to teach spelling or reading, writing or arithmetic, science or history.

All of that is knowledge that a teacher can teach; it is different from the kind of learning that is referenced in Psalm 119. It is more like learning that is of the world, that can be used to get a job, to develop a career, or to communicate more effectively with others. The balance between teachers and learners is a kind of balance between the spirit and the world. The learner who is of the spirit is indeed near to God and beloved by God.

A teacher who is of the world can help the learner to navigate this world more successfully, while the learner who is of the spirit can help the teacher to be mindful of the things of God. The two can really balance one another out in the sense that each has what the other is lacking.

The learner in the 21st century may have an edge over educators who grew up in a non-digital world because the learner has access to information that the teacher may not know how to navigate—namely the Internet. The Internet is like the great library of Alexandria: everything was there, all the information that one could want. Learners who are self-motivated and capable of self-directed learning can really use the Internet to become quite knowledgeable about the subjects that are of interest to them (Tapscott & Barry, 2009).

For this reason, I feel that the teacher really has to teach to his strengths. Teach the things he knows and adapt it to the young learners (Skiba & Barton, 2006). The student is going to learn what the student wants to learn, but the teacher may also have some knowledge that the student does not have access to—particularly if the teacher is older and of an older generation. The older generation still has a wisdom about it that the younger generation probably does not have.

In either case it is best to listen and to be humble—and that goes for teachers as well as students. All come from the same cloth and all are sons of Adam. Everyone has a claim to the love of God and everyone can grow in wisdom. The grace for everyone is there; it abounds even more than where sin abounds. People should not think that they are better than someone just because they know something. What they need to be is humble.

They need to be in the spirit. They need to be near to God, because that is where true wisdom is,.