The three exes of learning: explanation

As a general rule, I would urge that you never trust any teacher who says that there are three-of-anything, especially if they start with the same letter or syllable.  ...but, of course, I'm different, so I'll say that there are three domains of learning

• Explanation
• Exploration
• Experimentation

Neat, huh?

The trouble is that I reckon that there's a fourth domain, intimacy (and I can't find another ex- word for that! :-(  but never mind.  Intimacy is that process and moment when we draw near to our God, when we hear His voice (or not) but somehow know that He is close by and that somehow, our life will never be quite the same again.  I have not explanation for this, no clever words to teach you how to do it (I doubt that you need them)...

but now on to my three exes!  tada!!

Let's do the most difficult one first.  It's the one that is the most common in the churches that I've been to. although I suspect that it might be less dominating in other traditions.  It is potentially the most dangerous to our learning journey and yet it is championed by almost all clerical errors.  Explanation, usually done by one person, who's spent a long time studying and who knows about whatever he (or she) is explaining.  What's the danger of explanation?  I hear you ask (well I don't actually, 'cos I suspect that you've read the previous post (rant) and so can guess what I think the problem with explanations are.

There are three attendant dangers to explanatory teaching/learning. They do not mean that explanation is unnecessary or that it is bad or that explainers are bad people.  It's just that whatever we do, there are always unintended consequences.  We only ever own half of our actions, the other half is created by those around us and explanations have a way of provoking unhealthy responses from our action-creating-partners.  So the four problems:

1. If you watch any soaps on TV, you may notice that no scene lasts more than about 90 seconds. This is because some clever researcher has found that most of us can't concentrate on one thing for more than about 90 seconds.  So why preachers, oops sorry, explainers think that we can listen for 15 or 20 minutes (or even 5 minutes for the quick preachers, oops sorry explainers) to one voice, often without any visual cues or support, is either folly or arrogance.
2. Explanations have a tendency to provide people with answers and nothing, but nothing kills off learning quite like answers.  If you have an answer that looks suspiciously like the answer then you just don't need to do any more learning do you?  And before any putative explainer says "But I don't preach, sorry, explain like that... sorry but you don't control how you're listened to! You may studiously try to avoid giving answers, but that does not say... in fact I'd almost certainly predict that the majority of your listeners will attribute to you the giving of the answer.  Now of course they may disagree with your answer, but answer they will make it and that'll be the end of the learning.
3. Recently, a friend from church came up to me and asked when I was next preaching.  She told me that she always looked forward to my sermons.  Vain pleasure at this complement was only just covered by my discomfort at the thought of another sermon.  I told her that I didn't enjoy preaching, except that I'm an appalling show off, that I thought it was a waste of time and that I suspected that people wouldn't ever remember the two or three questions with which I always finished my sermons.  "But everyone enjoys your sermons, Caroline they're fun but they're also challenging" "that's just the point," I replied, "They're fun, and folk settle back in their pews for a few minutes stimulating, thoughtful, funny talk and then walk away without considering the questions that they were supposed to take away and ponder of the following week.
4. The final trouble with explanations is that they have been such an ubiquitous form of teaching over the last 100-150 years that most of us have no idea what other ways of learning their might be. Explanations drown out other learning methods.  They squeeze out other learning contexts like bindweed squeezes the life out of plants in the garden... and bind week looks quite nice, just like a sermon. 

Is there nothing good about explanations?

..well, occasionally they can

• open our eyes to see new things
• start new and different conversations
• disturb our comfortable passiveness

but to do so the explanations have to be

• located and shaped by the listener's experience and learning needs, not some formal, top-down teaching programme.
• judged and used according to the difference they make to listeners' actions, not their head knowledge
• followed by inquiry and ongoing engagement at a level that sees the difference that is made, that encourages progress, re-explaining and extending bits that are needed as disciples' contexts change

(that all sounds like a conversation rather than a monologue to me)

and I'm afraid that I can count on the fingers of one hand the number of times that has happened in my life and I've listened to some of the great preachers of the last 30 years.

I'll get onto some of the more positive forms of learning in the next few days...

Comments

[Jeff Moulton]

Would you consider the word experience for your fourth word? In the context of one of the words in Greek for "to know" - Ginosko, this is the word used to describe, ahem, "relations" between a man and a woman, but is also used by Jesus in relation to knowing or not knowing us. It is a knowledge born out of experience. See Matthew 7:23 and John 14:17. This is in contrast to another word in Greek for "to know" - Oida, which is more of a "book learning" knowledge.

[Caroline]

Jeff, thanks for the suggestion...

I particularly like the link you've drawn to a relational idea of knowing

I guess my hesitancy would be the way experience and 'learning from experience' is used currently, which would mean that people would pick up the wrong end of the stick, but you've captured the esssence of my project

having said that, there is a deliberate teasing of myself and my teacher's, almost insatiable, requirement to package learning in neat units in pointing out how my three Xs aren't actually exhaustive :-)

thanks for visiting and commenting