Docere et Discere

Learning How to Teach vs. Teaching How to Learn

By Amy Barr of The Lukeion Project

As the world has changed rapidly, so too has education. Some parents who might have rarely pondered pedagogy were forced to discover new ways to balance out the chaos of their child’s on-again-off-again education. Home education has more than doubled in the last year as more are taking matters into their own hands. The Lukeion Project has welcomed many new families seeking to either supplement their children’s education or, having newly switched to home education full time, provide some much needed educational help. I figured some teaching insights from the ancient world might bring perspective. The Romans had a lot of thoughts about learning, teaching, and being teachable.

The Latin verb docere (to teach, to point out) is the source of the English word “doctor,” a person who is an educator (not a medical professional who was a medicor). Also a doctor was a person who has already been taught or well-instructed, coming from the verb’s passive participle doctus. The Romans would have also used this participial form to describe an experienced or clever person who knew a subject very thoroughly which really the source of one earning one’s “doctorate” degree. Docte is a related adverb meaning “shrewdly” or “cleverly.”

Monere (also meaning “to warn” or “to remind” about something that a person should already know). A monitor (from which we get the modern English word) meant “prompter” as in a person who sits discreetly near a stage to help actors remember forgotten lines. By-and-by the English word “monetary” comes from the same verb but that’s a very convoluted story to include here.

Instruere (where we get “instruction” and “instructor”) meant “to build or prepare.” This verb (struo or instruo) might be used setting up one’s home, setting up a battle line, or building a wall. The passive participle instructus means a combination of “equipped” and “supplied.”

Praecipere means to “to warn” and also “to anticipate.” When using the word to indicate “to teach,” the writer implies how an educator equips the learner to be ready for something that will eventually happen. A praeceptum (precept) is a command or rule—something that must and will happen so one must plan for it.

We get the English word erudite (scholarly) from erudire which can mean “to instruct” in the sense of taming or removing roughness from a student. Look at ex + rudis, a word meaning rough, raw, or uncultivated sort of like a weedy field before it is made into a garden.  

Bringing young people along in their education has always been a mix of forming, warning, building, furnishing, and equipping—but what about the job of being educated? What is a student’s responsibility in all this?  

The Latin verb reperire means “to learn” in the sense of finding out, obtaining, getting to know something. A repertor was a discoverer or inventor. Both words come from re + parere, a word meaning “to produce” or “to create.”Reperire also means “to create again and again.”

Discere, from which we get “discovery” a term related to “didactic,” means “to acquire knowledge of” or “to find out” in much the same way that an investigator discovers the facts of a situation. The -sc- part of the word is a special ingredient in Latin that suggests the process takes time and grows as it goes (we call -sc- an inceptive).  Similarly, the verb conperire also means “to discover by investigation.” From this Latin verb we get the English word “compare,” like when we hold up several objects and investigate the differences.

 The verb percipere means “to collect” or “to seize” as well as “to learn.” A perceptive person mentally comprehends all the principles at hand and collects them in mind much like a detective.

Notice how all the words for educating suggest a supporting role (like a tour guide or the person that helps remind a student of forgotten lines or maybe the person that keeps the supplies available). The words for learning are active and primary. The student is the investigator, builder, observer, the main agent in gleaning and gaining knowledge. The educator? Our job is just to be here to help.

Tell Yourself Valuable Things

You are What Your Team Says You Are

Amy Barr of The Lukeion Project

Does teamwork make the dream work? Often our team is our family. Occasionally we get to work with a group of our own choosing, such as with friends. Most often we are teamed up with others without much personal choice involved like when we volunteer to help to clean up after a big storm or when we join a league to play a sport, or we are part of band or dance group. Even if we live in isolation and can’t remember doing much of anything as part of a team, each of us still works as part of a very small team: we have to work with ourselves.

Some of us don’t have to imagine what it is like to have “that” teammate who constantly complains or interjects doubts.

“It’s too hot to do our best today!”

“We haven’t practiced this very long so now we are going to do a terrible job!”

“I’m not very good at this, I am probably going to mess this up terribly for everyone else.”

“The odds are really against us so why try?”

Ask any coach or director (of any kind) and they’ll likely tell you the most important part of their job is keeping a team’s spirit positive and productive. It only takes one person with a defeatist attitude to bring progress and success to a grinding halt. Employers avoid promoting grumblers and complainers even if those complaints are genuine. No matter what the task might be, productivity is destroyed by Wally Wet-blanket who pollutes everything with negativity.

“But I am only raising accurate concerns!” screams Wally (or Wanda) Wet-blanket who assumes he (or she) is the very first person on the team to realize that conditions are not ideal for swift and easy success. Most humans are naturally pessimists without assistance from negative teammates spelling things out. Statistically accurate complaints need not be expressed in most team situations (except in those horror movies where everyone weirdly agrees to hide in the basement instead of running toward the busy well-lit road nearby).

Good teammates defy reality! They cheer everyone else on to success despite the odds. They shout to struggling teammates, “you got this!” They celebrate each step toward victory with congratulations:
“Yes! That’s better than last week. Good work.” 

We hear these encouraging words and eventually come to believe what our teammates tell us. We become what they think we are. Maybe we really can do this!

Put two otherwise equal teams into a match and the one that shares a positive encouraging team approach will succeed over the group that wastes energy niggling about every obstacle and flaw.

The smallest team you play for is yourself and you maintain a constant dialog with yourself, even while you sleep. Maybe you say things like, “You aren’t very good at learning new things.” Perhaps you say, “You are not good at sports (or languages, writing, or math).” Sporadically you say, “everyone is much better at this than you are so you should give up.”

Hopefully you say, “Yes! That’s much better than last week!” or possibly, “You got this! Just another couple of practice sessions!” or maybe, “Sure, you are hot and tired, but you can finish well so don’t give up.”

A match between two otherwise equal teams will always be won by the team that cheers its members to victory. You face each day with a choice. Which team would you rather join? Wally Wet-blanket believes he is justified in spouting negativity about why it is unlikely he (his team) will do well, or he’ll mumble relentlessly about how unprepared he might be, or he’ll moan about issues outside his control. Since we are our own team, we become who we say we are. If we say we are not up to a task, we will not ever be up to that task.

Decide instead to tell yourself valuable things like, “I will give this situation my full energy and I’ll succeed better and better each time,” or “I practiced this so I know I can do it,” or “I really am capable at being good at this!” 

Let your internal dialog be the place where there never is heard a discouraging word.You are what you say you are. Start saying you are excellent.

Fascinating & Apotropaic

 Weird Squash, Odd Jewelry

By Amy Barr with The Lukeion Project

Apotropaic comes from Greek αποτρέπειν "to ward off." It comes from από- "away" and τρέπειν "to turn,” specifically “to ward off evil.” Every world culture has a superstitious quirk or two that people employ in an effort to ward off evil (or maybe even bring good luck). True to human nature, we might think our grandmother’s admonition to avoid walking under ladders or opening umbrellas in the house sounds as normal as decorating the barn with a lucky horseshoe. We are less likely to accept superstitious quirks from other cultures as normal, so I have collected a few here to entertain us all.

If one wanted to ward off evil in ancient Greece, one would decorate clothes, buildings, or jewelry with the face of a gorgon to stop evil in its tracks just like Medusa could drop you dead like a rock with just one glance. The gorgon’s face was not pleasant. It had fangs, wild eyes, a protruding tongue, and unruly hair. Now that I think about it, this also describes me before I have had some coffee in the morning.

A gorgon’s face was a standard ornament for armor but also used in architecture, clothing, rugs, and jewelry. According to standard mythology, the Greek goddess Athena put on her dad’s favorite jacket, the Aegis, and then decorated it with a gorgon’s face as a fitting example to humans about the proper way to turn away evil while dressing well.

Likely related to the scary gorgon’s face was the representation of eyes, either as a set or singleton, to intimidate evil. Drawing a single eye was much easier than illustrating a gorgon. For the art impaired, drawing an eye was a cheap, fast, easy means to ward off malevolent glares. In ancient Greece there were eyes on cups (lest one swallow evil) and ships (shipwrecks were a big problem). If you visit modern Greece or much of the eastern Mediterranean, you will see a similar symbol adorning everything from buses and homes to fine jewelry. The iconic Mati or blue eye often appears in a lovely Aegean blue glass (much nicer than the fanged googly-eyed original). These make a lovely way to give evil the boot.

The Romans chased off evil or envious glances with jokes and funny pictures. Both the Greeks and Romans used images or charms of (ehem) a certain body part to scare away evil. These charms – often used for earrings, lamps, or necklaces—were called fascinum/fascina. The term “fascinating” comes from the name of these (ehem) charms. The term was meant to imply that one had been put under a spell. The term may or may not have anything to do with the fasces, the bundle of rods and an ax carried by lictors before the Roman consul. Fasces, not fascina, led to the modern term “fascism.”

Meanwhile, back to scary faces: gargoyles were ugly enough to scare evil away from important buildings in Europe. The English term “hunky punk” described grotesque scary carved architectural bits, but I think it might fit for some members of boy bands.

If one wanted an affordable home-spun ugly carved-thing, turnips did the trick for many years. Thankfully, turnips are as difficult to carve as they are to eat so other fruits or vegetables cycled through the list of options. Celts adopted winter cucurbits (squash, melons, etc) as an easier way to scare away evil since they were available right after harvest when people celebrated the new year.

The idea of apotropaic fall fruits resonated well in the early colonies of the United States where settlers needed some extra good luck. North American tribes gave us the names for squash (a Massachusett word, askꝏtasquash or a Narragansett word, askútasquash) and pumpkin (Massachusett pôhpukun meaning “grows forth round”). 

Growers are happy to offer every type of pumpkin, squash, and gourd for the purpose carving and stacking while (thankfully) turnips fell out of style. These carve-worthy fruits make tasty pies for Thanksgiving plus delicious roasted the seeds!