seventh response

 
Answer this question (does moral education require religious education? ) do you agree or disagree? and why if you agree or disagree and what do you think please do not summarize the files that I will send

National Society for the Study of Education, Volume 112, Issue 1, pp. 154-175;
The purpose of this chapter is to understand the spiritual dimensions of teaching by elucidating the cardinal and forgotten virtue of reverence. Reverence has a power beyond a typical understanding of it as something religious. Reverence involves a sense of wonder and awe for something or someone that meets at least one of the following conditions: (1) something we cannot control; (2) something we cannot create; (3) something we cannot fully understand; (4) something transcendent,
even supernatural The chapter shows reverence in a wider context that does not diminish its spiritual connotations, but rather shows its importance and relevance to teaching in today’s classrooms.
These are destitute times for those in PK-12 teaching and others, such as ourselves, who help prepare and work with them. The sad signs of the times are on the surface of the language we use in public media and educational
reports to talk about schools and teachers. The signs, however, are subtle; they involve naming the absent, which is one of the critical components of any freedom project. Here are some words and phrases that one might expect to be prominent in the public rhetoric regarding the moral craft of teaching yet are almost entirely absent: style, hospitality,
moral luck, irony, soul, privacy, emptiness, and tragedy (see Garrison & Rud, 1995). There is surprisingly little moral and even less aesthetic language in the media and political discourse about teaching. Instead,
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we hear about human capital, high standards, accountability, work preparedness,
and high-stakes testing. Such public rhetoric impoverishes a teacher’s ability to comprehend their calling. Our paper will explore something that provides an implicit moral critique of such impoverished rhetoric—reverence in teaching. Reverence is an unnatural absence in the contemporary education conversation. Our paper is an effort to provide
reverence a proper place in the national conversation about the art of teaching.
Drawing upon the work of Paul Woodruff, we recover and elucidate a definition of reverence and link it to teaching. We continue this recovery project by locating reverence as a cardinal virtue, namely, one found across cultures. We suggest recovering virtue ethics and then using it to form part of the basis of good teaching. We then discuss the feelings and emotions that accompany reverence while connecting them to instances of sensitive and good teaching. We look at the role that reverence plays in reflective morality through the realization that moral inquiry is necessarily
dependent upon learning from others, and is thus always incomplete
and provisional. Those who proclaim otherwise readily fall victim to imposter virtues.
Before reading further, please pause to name some other words and phrases you wish people would use to talk about the profession of teaching.
It is not always easy. We urge you to look away from popular speechifying.
First, look within. Next, think about your conversations with other dedicated teachers, your dialogue with students (and not just your best ones), and your conversations with spouse or lover. Finally, can you remember
what first called you to teaching? Remarkably, over the years, we have found that pre-service and award-winning veteran teachers find it equally difficult to express the passion and pleasures of the call to teach (See Hansen, 1995 and Lortie, 1975). Reverence involves the vague feeling
of awe as well along with emotions such as humility, shame, and respect.
1 The word “affectivity” derives from the Latin affectus, which is a state of openness that leaves us vulnerable to what is outside and beyond us, which attracts and moves us in many ways. It is not just passive “feeling.”
We will approach reverence through affectivity, although we will not restrict ourselves to the affective and active domain alone, as we begin
by working toward a definition of reverence for our purposes.
PERCEIVING, PORTRAYING, AND DEFINING REVERENCE
Reverence arises when we have as sense of something vastly greater than ourselves that invokes our capacity for feelings of awe before its magnificence as well as emotions of humility, respect, and shame before it and within the community that shares our sense of wonder.2 We must have the experience; we must intuitively understand the feelings and
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emotions that accompany reverence if we are ever to grasp the idea. It has us before we ever have it. Still, it is worth striving to define the idea, but we do believe that in its fullness the experience of reverence overflows the banks of any cognitive concept or category that we might construct to contain it. Therefore, our paper begins by probing the meaning of the word through portrayals in hopes of developing a richer appreciation later. Here are two depictions of teaching acts, moments, and insights that we think have the affective quality reverence requires:
The kids educated and enlightened me. The stories they told, while often quite personal, allowed me to see more clearly the larger picture, the struggles and triumphs that had shaped their lives and those of their families. They also forced me to take a fresh look at how I fit into that bigger picture—to step back and look at my own hands. It was a reawakening for me, really, but it was only a beginning. I knew I had a lot yet to learn about the kids who called me their teacher. (Michie, 1999, p. 85; see also pp. 6 and 89)3
You ask me why I’m here; it has to do with love. Education’s about getting a kid to love words, love language, to love to be able to manipulate numbers. That’s what it’s really about. The good teachers I had, I remember—they had a love for the subject,
and somehow they transferred that love of the subject to me. Educators have to be motivated by love . . . . You have the opportunity
to present them with a love of learning. The desire to know after you’re gone. (Michael Johnson in Rose, 1995, p. 217)
These statements show teachers open to the passions, ideas, and ideals of their students and the subject matter they teach in answering their call to create a community of learners. Although Johnson leaves off at the love of knowing, his statement implies not only a reverent sense of love, but a wise one as well. One might well maintain that the whole passage is about the proper flow of the form of love the Greeks called “eros” to pedagogical ends.4 Passionate desire is also the source of all motivation. There is never any need to motivate a live creature to act; they act by virtue of their living passions. The secret of motivation is the proper direction of passions, the proper education of eros. Hence, motivation itself is worthy of a teacher’s reverence, although we should approach it with a sense of humility.
Often, delineating reverence is more a matter of affective and imaginative
perception than cognition, although that too is important. It is more about being somebody than just knowing something; nonetheless, we need some more or less definite idea about what we mean when we
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speak of reverence. Here is our working definition:
Reverence is a sense of human limitation, imperfection, and our appropriate place in the order of things accompanied by the actualization
of our capacity for awe, humility, respect, and shame, regarding our sense of something or someone that meets at least one of the following conditions: (1) something or someone that cannot be changed or controlled by human means—something we are powerless to alter; (2) something or someone we cannot create; (3) something or someone we cannot completely understand;
(4) something or someone transcendent, perhaps even supernatural.5
Reverence requires us to recognize not only that we are imperfect, but so is everyone else. Imperfection is simply a part of the human condition. Practically, it helps us get along with others within the reverent community
because we recognize and forgive ourselves and each other even as we strive together to secure our highest ideals. Reverent awareness and the feelings and emotions that accompany it put us in harmony with our selves, our community, and our cosmos. This sense of harmony will become
especially relevant later when we discuss the ethical Golden Mean.
A few examples of “something” that meets one or more of these conditions
are: The preciousness and frailty of life, justice, truth, ideas, ideals, love, death, nature, the creation, creativity, possibility, human potential, and the subject matter we teach. Examples of “someone” include various notions of a Supreme Being or simply a hero or heroine whose capacity for noble acts exceeds the ordinary, such as Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., or maybe just everyday folks like an immensely influential teacher.
We will reflect some on the above passages to exemplify and expand on the idea of reverence while examining the feelings and emotions they invoke
and the understandings they bring. Before we do, however, we would like to make a request. Before reading further, please look at our definition. What do you think of it? How might you improve it? Using your definition
or ours, we urge you to look back at the passages we have provided. In what ways do they seem to express reverence to you? Taken individually or collectively, do they capture what you mean by reverence as you begin to reflect upon it? We ask these questions in part because we sense that there may be some individual idiosyncratic quality to the experience of reverence, although we are not entirely sure. We do know we wish to approach the idea of reverence reverently, and over the years we have been working with this notion, we have found that its meaning continually grows and deepens for us as we talk to teachers, students, friends, even young children. They often say things that cause us to pause and reflect further. We urge you to do the same as you read our text and share your impressions with others.
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Consider Gregory Michie’s remarkable admission: “The kids educated and enlightened me” (1999, p. 85). Here we have an unmistakable comprehension
of human limitation, imperfection, and needfulness. He realizes
that the story of his life intersects creatively with that of his students. It allows him to learn from his students, and as we shall see, a teacher learning from students is one sign of a reverent classroom. Reverent recognition
of human limitation, with the accompanying feelings and emotions,
allows teachers to comprehend that they are needful, incomplete, unfinished, and will never be perfect. Michie recognizes that while we all have the potential to tell unique stories, all stories are ultimately co-creations.
We need other human beings to help us author our story and tell it well. Hence, we must respect our co-authors, or students, and should feel shame when we fail them in honoring the ideals of the learning community
we share.
We cannot make students share their genuinely heartfelt personal stories,
although we can perhaps coerce poorly composed fictional work. Michie did not create the stories his students tell. They are gifts; you cannot coerce or buy the ones that matter most to those who tell them, you may only receive them with appreciative reverence. Such stories are something no teacher can control, although they may work with their students
to better understand and appreciate them. We may or may not be able to fully understand our student’s stories, but that is not the thing of utmost importance. Michie eventually spent a great deal of time learning the language his students preferred for composing their stories (Spanish) and comprehending the culture from whence they came (Mexico and the Mexican-American experience in Chicago). All this learning helped him find his proper place in the classroom, school, and community. He came to understand these stories well enough to work with his students in co-authoring new ones.
Let us look at Michael Johnson’s statement as reported by Mike Rose. Although often clouded by many other feelings and emotions, the experience
of love may nonetheless provide some of the most intense and frequently encountered instances of reverence, and in this case, reverence
for teaching. However, it is important to distinguish reverence from other powerful and pervasive emotions like love. Here we have reverent love where reverence is an adjective modifying the nature of the love. Reverence often modifies emotions in this way. When such modification occurs it transforms the emotion into one of reverence, while the feelings and emotions that gave rise to it may also remain to frame the reverent experience. It is here that our working definition is most helpful.
We believe Johnson expresses a profound reverence for teaching that unites several different aspects of it each of which is worthy of reverence in its own right. Besides a reverence for teaching broadly conceived, at
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the very least this passage includes a reverence for students, a reverence for learning, a reverence for subject matter, a reverence for sharing inquiry
into subject matter with students across generations, and a reverence
for the teacher-student relationship.
RECOVERING VIRTUE ETHICS FOR MORE CARING TEACHING
BEYOND THE REALM OF RULES: THE CARDINAL
VIRTUE OF REVERENCE
Woodruff (2001) argues that reverence is a “cardinal virtue,” by which he means that like courage, justice, prudence, or temperance we can find forms of it in many, perhaps all, cultures.6 Lesser virtues might include individual autonomy, promptness, personal accountability, thrift, hard work, and such, which are associated with the Protestant work ethic of John Calvin. These virtues are widespread, but far from universal. Indeed,
many, perhaps most, people on earth participate in cultures that emphasize the collective nature of self and society as opposed to the concept of atomistic individualism. This is one of the things, along with compliance and a de-emphasis of competition in favor of harmonious cooperation, that separate the Protestant work ethic from, for instance, Confucianism, which likewise emphasizes hard work and thrift (Lim & Lay, 2003). We pick this example of cultural difference among secondary virtues because Protestant work ethic virtues so completely dominate the public conception of teaching in the United States. Meanwhile, teachers too may embrace work ethic virtues, but are much more likely to supplement
them with an ethic of care, compassion, altruism, connectedness, and perhaps even reverence for teaching.
Virtue ethics is concerned with the content and quality of our character.7 The organizing question of modern ethics has tended to be: “What are we morally obligated to do?” Answers to this question yield “duty” ethics or “consequentialist” ethics. The organizing question of ancient ethics was usually:
“What kind of person is it best to be?” Answers to this question yield virtue ethics (see Sher, 1998, p. 1). Duty ethics along with ethical consequentialism
(especially utilitarianism) dominates public morality in the modern age including public discourse surrounding teaching, at least in the West. Duty ethics places a strong emphasis on abstract, decontextualized moral rules, laws, obligations, and rights while utilitarianism emphasizes quantitative
analysis to maximize the greatest good for the greatest number. Anyone
familiar with educational bureaucracy understands how rules regulate and govern that sphere and how technocrats, inspired by E. L. Thorndike, use numbers (e.g., test scores and rankings) to maximize perceived utility. We believe virtue ethics, duty ethics, and consequentialism combine nicely to complement one another, but are distressed that modernity and post-modernity alike have largely forgotten virtue ethics. Meanwhile, among
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the cardinal virtues, reverence is as Woodruff (2001) puts it, a “forgotten virtue.” This fact is especially apparent in the public discussion concerning PK-12 schooling, and much of the discussion among teachers and teacher educators themselves as well, entirely ignores reverence and only pays scant attention to other courage, temperance, prudence, and even justice, much less the secondary virtues common to teaching such as care and compassion. Our paper seeks to remember reverence in virtue ethics and contribute to restoring virtue ethics to its proper place in teaching.
Virtue ethics concerns itself with habits of action, attitudes, values, imagination, affectivity (including feelings and emotions), interests, perceptions,
and desires that serve as motives for individual action. We are particularly interested in the affects of awe, respect, shame, and humility associated with reverence. As Woodruff states: “Virtue ethics takes feelings
seriously because feelings affect our lives more deeply than beliefs do . . . You may learn rules intellectually, and therefore you may learn or forget them very quickly” (2001, p. 6). One might add that if you are a utilitarian, you may also miscalculate, and if you are committed to rules, you may misapply them.
Virtues do not replace rules or careful consideration of consequences. A complete ethical theory includes rules, rights, duties, caring, and concern
about the nature of the truly good. Virtuous persons, however, obey appropriate rules, carry out right action, and execute their social duties
because of the constitution of their character as opposed to external imposition or some putative inner will. Other forms of ethics tend to overlook the unity of the self and its actions because in some way or another, they assume a mind (including the will) versus body dualism. For instance, both duty ethics and utilitarianism tend to assume every individual has a rational faculty that carries out cogent deductions or calculations they only subsequently implement in action unless their will is somehow defective. Once we recognize the unity of the self and its actions,
we will realize that every lapse in virtuous action returns to harm the self and the community (e.g., the school) through which the consequences
of our actions flow.
The emphasis on habits (dispositions) of action gives virtue ethics an embodied, biological matrix out of which ethical action may emerge. Habits are generalized responses to classes of stimuli that impart them with a concrete, universal—even logical—quality. There are bad habits as well as good ones. Here, we are interested in habits as dispositional traits of character that are good for someone to possess. Good practice in any field from medicine to teaching requires a large array of skilled habits ethical and otherwise. We are especially concerned with virtuous habits. John Dewey (1922/1983) states:
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To get a rational basis for moral discussion we must begin with recognizing that functions and habits are ways of using and incorporating
the environment in which the latter has its say as surely as the former. We may borrow words from a context less technical than that of biology, and convey the same idea by saying
that habits are arts. They involve skill of sensory and motor organs, cunning or craft, and objective materials. They assimilate
objective energies, and eventuate in command of environment.
They require order, discipline, and manifest technique. (pp. 15-16)
Generations of educators have ignored the role of habits in teaching. Habits transform raw feelings into emotions by giving them structure and direction (see Damásio, 2003; Garrison, 2003; LeDoux, 1998). Habits
must functionally coordinate with the environment. That means they must incorporate the environment into their functioning. We inhabit our world. When we travel to places strange to us, say from schools in the suburbs to those in the inner city, many of our habits may cease functioning
well, or even at all. Many, perhaps most, of our habits, good and bad, are and will remain unconscious. Growing as teachers involves not only acquiring them, but also becoming aware of having them, and then reflecting on them critically and creatively.
Duty ethics and utilitarianism commonly assume an “ought” versus “is” dualism. Normative (ought) statements are seen as dramatically different from descriptive (is) statements such that you cannot derive an “ought” from an “is.” Such a formalist, deductive approach to ethics tends to denigrate the mediating “is” of human action. Virtue ethics can narrow the gap between the actual “is” and the moral “ought.” Habits provide intelligent guidance and control of affective impulses (e.g., eros). Dewey (1922/1983) declares: “All habits are demands for certain kinds of activity;
and they constitute the self. In any intelligible sense of the word will, they are will” (p. 221). A genuinely virtuous person is somebody that habitually does what they ought to do anyway, even if they do not fully comprehend the reasons or cannot do the calculations. Virtuous people do the right thing, at the right time, in the right way, even if they do not know the right reason, because that is who they are. The popular motion picture Forrest Gump provides an illustration. Gump has good moral habits
as well as moral perception and imagination, but his lack of ability to engage in reflective inquiry is dangerous, as we see in several poignant and often funny scenes in the film. We will discuss the role of intelligent inquiry and reverence in the next section.
Good teaching requires the virtuous habits of moral perception. We cannot respond properly unless we can clearly comprehend what needs
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doing in any unique situation with unique people (teachers, teacher aides, administrators, secretaries, students, lunch room personnel, and parents). It also involves moral imagination. We cannot act properly unless
we can grasp all the possibilities of the situation. For instance, to teach well we must be able to grasp human potential including what Rose (1995) calls “possible lives.” As Woodruff (2001) remarks, “Human potential,
too, can be the object of reverent respect” (p. 160).
Emphasis on traits of character and vague things like moral perception and imagination disturb those committed to entirely rationalist ethics. Virtue ethics is ancient; most contemporary versions trace their origins to Aristotle who provides a rational argument identifying the limit of abstract, universal rules (see Swanton, 2003, p. 1).8 The ideal of those overly fond of rules is that in even uniquely particular cases (e.g., a classroom
discipline problem), there are always rules we can apply to determine
our action. Ultimately, everything is rule-governed. If so, then we may ask how we know when to apply a rule. The answer for the formal, deductive extremist is that we need specific rules, but then how would we know when to apply these more specific rules? We would need rules that are still more specific, and so on forever. Aristotle used this infinite regress
argument over 2,300 years ago to conclude that, “these are matters of perception. If we are always deliberating, we shall have to go on to infinity”
(Ross, trans., 1941, p. 970). Reverence defies complete conversion into rule-based ethics. We do not wish to glorify feeling and intuition. Rather we only wish to put abstract reason reverently into its place.
The ethics of abstract and general rules, laws, and judgment may conflict
with the concrete, sometimes one-time-only requirements of the ethics
of care (compassion, connection, personal response) and the ethics of virtue. Teachers are members of a caring profession that is nonetheless obligated to the rules of whatever public or private bureaucratic institution
wherein they may find themselves. Ohanian (2001) writes:
But idiosyncratic kids, unique circumstances, and aberrant behavior
require individualistic solutions, which is why behavior checklists and schoolwide discipline policies, matched with steel-encased consequences to match every student misdeed, are a terrible
mistake. We must never forget that when we pass a rule, we have to live with it. (p. 127)
In institutional settings, virtuous teachers must sometimes break rules to save children. However, it is also sometimes necessary to break children for the good of the larger order. Virtues often operate in the gaps between rules, and when rules (or calculations) fail. They aid moral perception and imagination, thereby helping us apply rules more appropriately.9
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THE REVERENT FEELINGS AND EMOTIONS OF TEACHING
Recall that reverence gives rise to feelings and emotions of awe, humility,
respect, and shame. Woodruff (2001) makes an important distinction between reverence as an ideal and feelings and emotions “that may or may not serve that ideal” (9). “You can never follow an ideal too closely, but,” he declares, “you can have too much—or too little—of the feelings to which it gives rise” (9). What we seek is Aristotle’s Golden Mean where we avoid extremes of excess or deficiency. Recall too that reverence puts us in our place thereby providing harmony with our selves, community, and cosmos. Reverence helps us find the Golden Mean. The feelings and emotions that arise from reverence help us balance our selves while putting
us in right relationships with others.
A cross-cultural ideal, we find much the same principle as the Golden Mean in the doctrine of the mean in Confucianism and the middle way in Buddhism. The Golden Mean is not like balancing on a seesaw. As part of virtue ethics, it introduces an aesthetic dimension rarely found in duty and utilitarian ethics. Dewey (1932/1985) expresses this aspect well: “The Greek emphasis upon Kalokagathos, the Aristotelian identification of virtue
with the proportionate mean, are indications of an acute estimate of grace, rhythm, and harmony as dominant traits of good conduct” (p. 271). The Kalokagathos refers to the fact that the good, the beautiful, and the harmonious are one. Regardless of what virtue, including reverence, that is at the forefront at any given moment, a virtuous person blends and balances their virtues according to what the context of action requires
right now. Similar remarks hold for emotions such as respect and shame that accompany the ideal of reverence. In examining these feelings
and emotions, we must constantly seek the Golden Mean.
According to Woodruff (2001), reverence is without creed. What he means is that what he calls “bare reverence” encompasses more than any specific belief system, or any particular belief at all, including beliefs in God or Gods, something fearsome, someone that is perfect, and so on (see Chapter 7). Disbelief is not necessarily irreverence. Instead, he proclaims
that the “principal object of reverence is Something that reminds us of human limitations” (p. 65). Therefore, it is not surprising that he would, correctly in our opinion, proclaim that the primary feeling of reverence is awe and that he would classify awe as “a feeling rather than an emotion” because “it tends to have objects that are not distinct and may occur in the absence of articulate belief” (p. 65). Awe is the feeling one has when confronted by the unchangeable, incomprehensible, or transcendent entirely beyond human power. Woodruff is right, “awe is the most reverent of feelings” (p. 147).
Genuine awe is so inarticulate because its object lies beyond the limits
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of language. At best, poetry, or the kind of narratives we employed as examples earlier, may only point at it. Over the years, we have known many amazing teachers, yet we have noticed that when we ask them why they find teaching so meaningful in spite of its many challenges, they are usually inarticulate. They cannot find the words to express what they feel and the words they do find are usually woefully inadequate. We think they are simply in awe of teaching and, in many cases, in reverent awe. In spite of the many frustrations, if you still find teaching truly remarkable, try expressing it to others, or even to yourself, in words. The results may surprise you.
Respect and shame differ from awe in that they are emotions involving
specific (even if false) beliefs about distinct, definable objects. Here is how Woodruff (2001) differentiates reverence from respect:
You can have too much [or little] respect, and you can have respect
for the wrong things . . . But if reverence is a virtue, it can never require of you anything that is wrong. So reverence does not always require respect, and reverent people will feel contempt
for whatever deserves contempt. (p. 66)
Remember, reverence requires the recognition of limits and human imperfection. It puts everyone that shares such reverence in their place, their right place within the larger community. However, we require intelligent
inquiry to form a judicious judgment allowing us to respect the right things or the right persons in the right balance at the right time given the situation. Since situations change and persons grow, one’s right place for any give task may change. Wise and intelligent teachers know how to follow students as well as lead them. Bare reverence requires neither
intelligence nor respect. However, shared reverence ushers forth respect as well as shame. Reflecting on what we respect introduces an intelligent, cognitive element beyond bare reverence.
Emotions of respect accompany reverence as naturally as awe. When members of a learning community share reverence for something greater
(e.g., the subject matter, the community, unique human potential, etc.), then they should show a degree of respect for every other member. For instance, we all share human life; we are all mortal, we all know love, joy, and sorrow, and we all hope and dream. Reverence for the human condition can unite us across vast differences of culture and religion. It may well be the supreme virtue of the multicultural classroom. Albert Schweitzer talked about reverence for life and the fellowship that bears the mark of suffering (Rud, 2007; 2011). Still, part of the human condition
is that we all feel pain, suffer, grieve, and die; of course, we may also all know peace, joy, and enduring life through our children. Reverence for life must express care and compassion for suffering while seeking and
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celebrating joy and peace. A teacher’s reverence for life in the classroom will compassionately ameliorate suffering while seeking to bring about and celebrate joy.
Common ideals unify a community. Such ideals as the love of learning and the love of subject matter bind together any learning community. Right respect puts us in our place within the community. Minimally, we should respect all members of our learning community. However, we should not respect everyone the same. Some express the values of the community better and less than others do. We should extend respect to others and ourselves according to our contributions to the classroom community. This means that sometimes students may be more worthy of respect than teachers.
Woodruff (2001) narrows the notion of respect for practical purposes in a way useful for the practice of teaching; he remarks: “You owe reverent
respect to anyone who satisfies two conditions—he or she (1) belongs to a practice in common with you, and (2) recognizes his or her position in the practice” (198). Respect is an emotion of appreciation, special consideration,
or thoughtfulness for others. “Respect is a gift,” writes Woodruff
(2001), “between teacher and student” (p. 189). Like agape, the gift of respect is only good if it continues to circulate freely. We may express thoughtful consideration for those with whom we may have profound professional and even religious disagreement if we recognize that we all are equally humbled before a shared mystery or that we pursue many of the same values such as justice, truth, or learning. Mutual respect in devotion
to a shared idea or ideal may bind people together even when it is obvious that some should be held in much higher esteem than others because
of their superior wisdom, moral character, or ability. All are equally humbled before the might of the mystery. Even criminals or classroom mischief-makers deserve a modicum of respect when it comes time to distribute justice. That is why we should ameliorate the severity of our judgment when the transgressor is contrite.
Classroom discipline should be reverent; it should never be an ego struggle between teacher and student. It helps teachers find the Golden
Mean in disciplinary action. Teachers must show special respect for the ignorant who only require education to become better people. In the classroom community, it is possible for all to share reverence for learning, the quest for meaning, human potential, the ideals of human flourishing, reverence for life, and democracy, even though some realize these things better or differently than do others. After all, overcoming ignorance
is perhaps the central task of teaching. Teaching is an altruistic, knowing, and caring profession wherein we must be willing to acknowledge
occasions when our students know more and practice compassion better than we. Everyone stands to learn something from everyone else
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in a truly reverent classroom. However much we may know, it is but a drop in an endless ocean. Reverent teachers will acknowledge their own limitations. Besides, the good is always beyond knowledge alone.
Shame and respect are intimately connected: “You cannot feel shame without feeling respect for something larger than yourself” (Woodruff, 2001, p. 72). The distinction is that respect is for others in the community
and shame refers to our own shortcomings (p. 65). Teachers may show reverence for the lives of students, recognizing and realizing students’ full potential, dedication to self-transcending (but not self-eradicating) care and compassion for students, commitments to the truth of what we teach, and much more. Teachers who revere these and other ideals of their profession will feel shame when they fail to live their lives according to their values. In reverent classrooms, teachers and students alike may feel shame when they fail the higher powers that rightly govern their shared community.
Whereas guilt tends to arise from a violation of one’s internal values accompanied
by regret and responsibility regarding some specific thought, feeling, or action, shame involves the whole person in regards to a violation
of some deeply held social or cultural value. Hence, we may feel ashamed of thoughts, feelings, and actions unknown to others and guilty about things of which others approve. Shame is more about the whole person in the larger community whereas guilt tends to confine itself to some specific aspect within the individual. We may feel generally good about ourselves and guilty over some one thing. Shame pervades the self.
Like respect, shame is not always reverent. “Without reverence, we may feel shame as the pain of being exposed to other people for having violated
community standards,” Woodruff (2001) writes, “and this is not a virtuous response, because it has nothing to do with right or wrong” (p. 63). However, with reverence, we become exposed to ourselves regarding the ideals we hold in awe with others, which leads to virtuous habits of recognition and response.
Shame is often a more useful emotion than guilt because it presses us to live better lives in relation to others and the greater self, which is ensconced in socially shared ideals, not just our own inner self. Like any emotion, shame or guilt is good or bad depending on the situation and the values involved. We should feel shame when we have betrayed an ideal we and other members of our community hold in reverence. However,
we must never allow others to shame us unless we have in fact fallen short of what our ideal requires of us. Like reverence itself, we must always
inquire into whether or not we should in fact feel shame at some act. We should form our own intelligent judgment and not just accept that of others who may not be acting reverently themselves.
We are reverent when we acknowledge our human limitations and imReverence
and Teaching: The Forgotten Virtue 167
perfections, including the limits of knowledge and values. The opposite
of such reverent humility is what the ancient Greeks called “hubris,” which expresses itself as an overweening pride and trust in rationality accompanied by a sense of invulnerability such that we need not attend to the thoughts, feelings, and actions of others, especially subordinates. Too often, such hubris accompanies dogmatic and tyrannical teaching.
We must distinguish humility from humiliation. Reverent humility involves
right relationship with other people and the universe as a whole. It is modest, and never arrogant, rude, or contemptuous. Proper humility respects others, but it also respects itself since part of finding one’s right place involves learning where one may make their best gifts to the greater
good that creates meaning and value for others while bringing appropriate
improvement to oneself. Humiliation is submissive, debasing, and frequently harmful to not only oneself, but also the larger community.
Humility involves self-eclipse not self-eradication. Reverent humility
does not hesitate to assert itself courageously for the greater good. The linguistic root of the word “good”—gód, originally “fit, adequate, belonging together,” has the same root as in the words gather and together.
Goodness involves fitting together in proper functional relation. It involves dynamic, not static, continuously evolving harmony among co-creating individuals. Such creative harmony realizes that disharmony is part of the rhythm of life. Good communities require and cultivate difference and diversity, but do so for a common (if sometimes evolving) good. While differences are essential to creativity, they can also cause destruction when not placed in proper relationship. Living in a dynamic, ever-evolving universe requires continuous moral creativity. Humility and goodness does not mean conformity. Indeed, in the next section, we will show how critical-creative inquiry that questions the customs of a community, including what we are told is worthy of reverence, is itself an act of highest reverence.
Approaching human limitation with appropriate humility allows teachers
to experience a sense of grace that something (e.g., justice, righteousness,
the subject matter, and such) or someone (e.g., teachers, colleagues, and so on) greater than their individual egos sustains them. A reverent attitude puts them in their proper place, keeping them from acting like little gods (or tyrants) or sinking to the level of beasts in fits of rage. It allows teachers to relax and enjoy the fact that they do not always have to be in control to teach well. Often they can depend on others in the community such as parents, administrators, and even the students themselves.
Once we recognize that we live by the grace of forces we cannot fully comprehend or control, reverence for life and recognition of human
limitation can complement each other.
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REVERENCE, IRREVERENCE, AND “IMPOSTER VIRTUES”
Dewey distinguishes between customary and reflective morality. Such cultural institutions as business, religion, government, and education (e.g., National Council for the Accreditation of Teacher Education, or NCATE) sanction customary morality. The customs of the body politic inscribe themselves on individual human bodies as habits. In customary morality, the good (commonly determined through consequences) and the right (duty, rules) along with virtue and vice often have a transcendent,
supernatural sanction (God, Reason, etc.) that lies beyond question and inquiry. Dewey (1908/1978) declares: “In customary morality, there is no choice between being enmeshed in the net of social rules which control activity, and being an outlaw” (p. 168). Two of the major moral prophets of the twentieth century, Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr., embraced their outlaw status and chose Henry David Thoreau’s “civil disobedience” as their method to secure social change; that is, deliberate,
reflective law breaking as their method of social reform. In itself,
docile or coerced compliance to customary morality does not make a teacher moral.
In virtue ethics, customary morality arises out of the epideictic rhetoric of praise and blame that prevails within a cultural tradition. It forms our habits of moral action. Because of its emphasis on often unconscious, embodied habits of action, virtue ethics is especially subject to the dogmatism
of unreflective morality. Dewey (1932/1985) remarks:
In customary morality it is possible to draw up a list or catalogue of vices and virtues. . . . The acts approved and disapproved have therefore the same definiteness and fixity as belong to the customs to which they refer. In reflective morality, a list of virtues has a much more tentative status. (p. 255)
Sockett (2012) makes a distinction between truth as a property of statements
and truthfulness as a property of persons (p. 57). He also proclaims:
“As the general pursuit of truth is a moral enterprise itself, intellectual
virtues are ipso facto moral virtues, although the reverse need not be the case” (p. 55). It is here that the cardinal virtues of reverence, justice, and courage become foremost. Indeed, we would suggest that these cardinal virtues unlike others such as accuracy, clarity, consistency might always work in the reverse.10 Consider reverence for truth. Let us look at the role reverence might play in reflective morality.
Ordinary virtues such as those of the Protestant work ethic are culturally
contingent and might not work well in other contexts. Indeed, we cannot say for sure they are virtues within a particular culture including our own unless we engage in reflective inquiry. Even then, a mere list will
Reverence and Teaching: The Forgotten Virtue 169
not make for satisfactory moral action unless we can determine which ones are most appropriate in a specific context and then combine them according to the Golden Mean. That too calls for inquiry.
Truth, or what Dewey more modestly calls “warranted assertabilty” to stress the falsifiability of any truth claim, can inspire a reverential attitude when we realize it transcends the human condition. Even if you believe we socially construct truth merely to serve finite human purposes, it must still satisfy objective conditions beyond human control. Finite creatures are not and never will be omniscient; they will never completely understand everything,
including the mystery of their individual selves, other individuals (e.g., students), or humankind (e.g., the classroom community). Woodruff remarks: “Reverence in the classroom calls for a sense of awe in the face of the truth and a recognition by teachers and students of their places in the order of learning” (p. 191). Recognition of human limitation humbles all, teacher and students alike, before the mystery of the unknown and, perhaps, unknowable. Even a proclamation from a divine source requires inquiry to interpret it correctly and to make sure the proclamation does not really issue
from a perfidious source that would lead us to perdition. We may continuously
improve our knowledge, but it will never prove perfect. However, teachers may acquire the habits of reverence and critical reflection and teach them to their students by personal example, precept, and shared practice.
Truth can never be the possession of only one person, including a teacher, however astute. The quest for truth and understanding belongs to every member of the community, including the classroom community, who answers the call, including those who have come before and those who are yet to come. We find this in Michie’s (1999) simple declaration:
“The kids educated and enlightened me” (p. 85). Reverent teachers are open to learning because they know they are vulnerable to the shifting
contingencies of existence and recognize that even the most assured position is subject to refutation. Reverence for truth alerts teachers to the permanent possibility of error whether it be in the subject matter they teach, the methods they use, or the social context of the community within which they teach. Good teachers exemplify such reverence to their students because they know they need their cooperation to realize the greater good they all seek to secure. This is why Woodruff avers:
Reverent teachers believe that students can match them in hunger
after knowledge, that they can learn what they wish to, and that they need to make learning their own. . . . Obviously they are unequal in attainments; that is why they need to be reminded of the equality they have in reverence for the truth. Respect is a feeling that goes with sharing a great project, one that has an aim worthy of reverence. (p. 190)
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Surely, the reproduction of cultural knowledge and wisdom is worthy of supreme reverence. So too is passing on the critical attitudes and skills of examining a cultural inheritance for its flaws as well as developing the creative capacities to not only imagine alternative possibilities, but the discipline and skill to actualize them. In good classrooms, both teacher and student find their proper place. Shame upon teachers that do not engage in the kinds of practices, including those of critical-creative inquiry,
that at least seek such a result. However much success remains beyond their powers.
Woodruff (2001) calls attention to what he calls “imposter virtues,” which he defines as “ideas that make us feel good about doing bad things” (p. 70). Distinguishing something (some idea or ideal) or someone genuinely
worthy of reverence from imposters is difficult, but doable. Woodruff
provides valuable guidance when he comments: “Imposter virtues generally cloud the mind” (p. 71). There is much to say about imposter virtues; however, we will confine ourselves to what happens when virtues exceed or fall short of the Golden Mean.
One example occurs when those who dogmatically believe that human customs are the will of God, since they can too easily follow a false prophet
just as free peoples who do not question their country’s leaders fail in their democratic duty and may fall into tyranny even as they think they are defending democracy.11 Another example is the false courage of individuals
who take foolish chances by not considering the consequences of their acts.
Teaching is an altruistic and caring profession since it concerns itself with the welfare of others. There is a strong if unstated cultural expectation
that teachers and other caregivers often believe they should sacrifice their time and energy solely for their charges. However, in most circumstances
self-sacrifice only disables the caregiver, thereby damaging their ability to carry out the caring function. Caregivers need to care for themselves
capably if they are to care competently for others. Similar remarks hold for altruism.
Chris Higgins (2011) distinguishes “professional ethics” from “moral professionalism” (p. 9). The latter is concerned with codes of conduct and the sort of dispositions that occupies the NCATE. Professional ethics regards “the relation between the teaching life and the good life” (p. 10). While a useful distinction, we must not allow it to harden into a mistaken dualism. Higgins does not. He recognizes what moral professionalism can contribute to professional ethics without reducing either to the other.
Higgins acknowledges the constitutive character of altruism to those seeking self-actualization in answering the call to teach and explores this at length. However, he does not allow altruism to “devolve into asceticism”
which readily leads to “such problems as teacher burnout” (2011,
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p. 11). He understand what we call social self-actualization, by which we mean that the best path to self-actualization is through proper respectful
relations with others in which our needs and purposes are satisfied in co-creative connection with those of others within a reverent community
wherein each would experience shame should they betray any of the shared ideals. The reverent community strives to actualize the unique potential of every individual member so that individual may make their unique contribution to community and thereby aid every other member to likewise actualize their potential. The result is what Aristotle called “eudaemonia,” which we moderns translate as happiness, but is better translated as fulfillment. Aided by intelligent inquiry, the reverent community
can locate the Golden Mean between excessive asceticism and selfishness. In this way, they may expose not one but two imposters.12
Reverence puts us in our correct station within the community, the cosmos, and within ourselves. It helps us recognize how to give and receive
with gratitude and mutual respect and shows we should be ashamed of greed, which is never good. In the reverent classroom teachers and students simultaneously actualize their individual unique potential by making their unique contribution to the greater good of subject matter, moral community, and more.
Woodruff (2001) suggests we may avoid imposter virtues such as excessive
asceticism and selfish self-actualization by never suspending “our own moral judgment or closing the lid on our own moral compasses” (p. 72). We agree when he insists: “Reverence sets a higher value on the truth than on any human product that is supposed to have captured truth” (p. 39). We also concur when he suggests that reverence “cherishes freedom of inquiry” (p. 39).13 Reverence requires that teachers respect such things as a school’s tradition or its leadership, but it requires more of them than that. We must also critically examine and sometimes criticize our leaders and our community’s values and, when necessary, imaginatively recreate them. This may require the greatest moral courage such as we find in Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr. Reverence for reflection, truth, and inquiry is always higher than reverence for one or another dogmatic assertion of truth.
Irreverence means showing a lack of respect for something or someone.
While irreverence is not a virtue in itself, it is nonetheless required if, upon careful reflection, something the community customarily commends
as worthy of universal reverence proves undeserving. When such sad events arise, we should not act reverently toward them. Sometimes, irreverence is the proper attitude; indeed, sometimes it is what true reverence
requires.14 On the other hand, in our times, there seems to be a tendency to mock even the highest and best. On such occasions, irreverence
is the greatest folly. It destroys individuals and communities by
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corrupting virtuous action. We do not extend suitable respect to others in our community and fail to feel shame when we should. When irreverence overcomes everything of worth, we have entered an era of nihilism that destroys all meanings and values human or transcendent.
1. Unlike vague anoetic feelings and moods, emotions have cognitive content.
They involve believing, knowing, thought, and such. See Garrison (2003).
2. We will distinguish the feelings of awe from the emotions of humility, respect,
and shame more in a later section.
3. We borrow the example of Michie from Rud and Garrison (2010a). Other parts of this paper borrow from that paper as well as Rud and Garrison (2010b).
4. Eros is a primordial, unalterable, uncontrollable, uncreated, incomprehensible,
but not necessarily transcendent force. It invokes an extraordinary sense of human limitation and imperfection accompanied with powerful feelings and emotions of awe and emotions of respect, shame, and humility. It inspired great reverence among the Greeks, as it should for us moderns.
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Ancient Greek education centered on educating eros to desire the truly good. Plato’s Symposium provides the most famous instance of such education. For Plato,
wisdom referred to “the Good” that lies beyond knowledge alone, although it requires knowledge. You may agree whether or not you accept his particular account
of the matter. Wisdom too is among those things that cannot be changed, controlled, or fully understood. Let us revere it. We find eros released and properly
channeled in the last two sentences of Michael Johnson’s reflection.
5. We owe this definition largely to Paul Woodruff (2001), especially pp. 63 and 117.
6. Woodruff devotes chapters to showing the similarities between reverence in ancient Greece and ancient China (especially Confucianism) and how those influences continue into the modern East and West. He also notes that we may find cardinal virtues in many different cultures although the objects toward which the members direct them often vary.
7. Stated simply, virtues are admirable character traits worthy of praise within a given society. As character traits, they are embodied dispositions (i.e., habits) of action. The epideictic rhetoric (the rhetoric of praise and blame) of a given society praises some dispositions while condemning others. Most teachers are familiar with the phrase “professional dispositions” as commonly used in teaching. The National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education defines professional dispositions as: “Professional attitudes, values, and beliefs demonstrated
through both verbal and non-verbal behaviors as educators interact with students, families, colleagues, and communities. These positive behaviors support
student learning and development.” (See http://www.ncate.org/Public/Newsroom/
NCATENewsPressReleases/tabid/669/EntryId/55/NCATE-Defines-Dispositions-
as-used-in-Teacher-Education-Issues-Call-to-Action.aspx; retrieved April 23 at 10:53 a.m.) The epideictic rhetoric of NCATE praises teacher dispositions associated with learning and is confident they can assess them. We are interested in ethically virtuous dispositions whose intentional goal directedness makes them difficult to assess. Cardinal virtues like reverence may prove especially intractable.
Teaching, like loving, is an intentional act verb. That means it is subject to all the vicissitudes of human intentions that lead to comedy and tragedy. We worry that NCATE lacks the proper sense of tragedy, comedy, and wisdom to properly assess teacher’s dispositions. They are too committed to quantification, miscomprehension of the means-ends relationship, and overly fond of reductive definitions. For concerns about NCATE’s kind of assessment along with some fine ideas on how to carry out intelligent assessment of teacher dispositions, see Sockett (2012, chapter 12). We will examine epideictic rhetoric a bit more below.
8. Swanton (2003) develops modern, “pluralistic” challenges to the ancient sources of virtue ethics. Interestingly, the entry for “Virtue Ethics” in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy mentions Confucianism as another ancient source of virtue ethics for which there is renewed contemporary interest.
9. See O’Neill (1998).
10. Sockett (2012) suggests some especially useful intellectual virtues of inquiry.
They include truthfulness, accuracy, clarity, consistency, open-mindedness, and fairness and impartiality in forming epistemological judgments that together
comprise what he aptly calls “thoughtfulness” (p. 179).
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11. Another example is the false courage of individuals who take foolish chances by not considering the consequences of their acts for themselves and others.
12. Similar remarks hold for parenting as for caring and altruism. We do realize
there are rare occasions of reverent self-sacrifice and ascetic action for the greater good.
13. The pursuit of truth involves intellectual virtues such as open-mindedness and impartiality. Reverence is an unusual virtue in that it can unite moral with epistemic (and artistic) virtues.
14. That does not mean that irreverence is ever the same as reverence; it is not.
References
Aristotle (1941). Metaphysics. (W.D. Ross, Trans.) In The Basic Works of Aristotle, ed. R. P. McKeon. New York, NY: Random House.
Damásio, A. (2003). Looking for Spinoza: Joy, sorrow and the feeling brain. London: William Heinemann.
Dewey, J. (1978). Ethics. In J. Boydston (Ed.), John Dewey: The middle works (Vol. 5.). Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press. (Original work published 1908)
Dewey, J. (1983). Human nature and conduct. In J. Boydston (Ed.), John Dewey: The middle works (Vol. 14.). Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press. Original work published 1922
Dewey, J. (1985). Ethics. In J. Boydston (Ed.), John Dewey: The later works (Vol. 7.) Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press. Original work published 1932
Garrison, J. (2003). Dewey’s theory of emotions: The unity of thought and emotion in naturalistic functional “co-ordination” of behavior. Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society, 39(3), 405-443.
Garrison, J., & Rud, A.G. (1995). The Educational Conversation: Closing the gap. New York, NY: State University of New York Press.
Hansen, D. (1995). The call to teach. New York, NY: Teachers College Press.
Higgins, C. (2011). The Good Life of Teaching: An Ethics of Professional Practice. West Sussex: Wiley Blackwell.
LeDoux, J. (1998). The emotional brain. New York, NY: Phoenix.
Lim, C., & Lay, C. S. (2003). Confucianism and the protestant work ethic Asia. Europe Journal, 1, 321-322.
Lortie, D. C. (1975). Schoolteacher: A sociological study. Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press.
Ohanian, S. (2001). Caught in the Middle. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.
Rose, M. (1995). Possible lives: The promise of public education in America. New York, NY: Penguin Books.
Rud, A. G. (2007). Caring for others as a path to teaching and learning: Albert Schweitzer’s reverence for life. In D. T. Hansen (Ed.), Ethical visions of education: Philosophies in practice (pp. 157-171). New York, NY: Teachers College Press.
Rud, A. G. (2011). Albert Schweitzer’s legacy for education: Reverence for life. New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan.
Sher, G. (1998). Ethics, character, and action. In E. Frankel, F. Miller, & P. Jeffrey (Eds.), Virtue and vice (pp. 1-17). Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press.
Sockett, H. (2012). Knowledge and Virtue in Teaching and Learning: The Primacy of Dispositions. New York, NY: Routledge.
Reverence and Teaching: The Forgotten Virtue 175
Swanton, C. (2003). Virtue ethics: A pluralistic view. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Woodruff, P. (2001). Reverence: Renewing a forgotten virtue. New York, NY: Oxford University Press
JIM GARRISON is a professor of education at Virginia Tech where he also holds appointments in the Department of Philosophy, Alliance for Social Political and Ethical Thought, and Science and Technology Studies.
His research focuses on philosophical pragmatism. Recent publications
include a co-edited work with A. G. Rud Teaching with Reverence: Reviving an Ancient Virtue for Today’s Schools (Palgrave, 2012) and another book co-authored with the Stefan Neubert and Kersten Reich at the University
of Koln, Germany, John Dewey’s Philosophy of Education: An Introduction
and Recontextualization for Our Times (Palgrave, 2012).
A. G. RUD is Distinguished Professor in the College of Education at Washington State University. His areas of research interest include philosophy
of education and the moral dimensions of teaching, learning, and leading. His most recent books are Albert Schweitzer’s Legacy for Education:
Reverence for Life (2011) and edited with Jim Garrison, Teaching with Reverence: Reviving an Ancient Virtue for Today’s Schools (2012), both published by Palgrave Macmillan.
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seventh response
Answer this question (does moral education require religious education? ) do you agree or disagree? and why if you agree or disagree and what do you think please do not summarize the files that I will send

National Society for the Study of Education, Volume 112, Issue 1, pp. 154-175;
The purpose of this chapter is to understand the spiritual dimensions of teaching by elucidating the cardinal and forgotten virtue of reverence. Reverence has a power beyond a typical understanding of it as something religious. Reverence involves a sense of wonder and awe for something or someone that meets at least one of the following conditions: (1) something we cannot control; (2) something we cannot create; (3) something we cannot fully understand; (4) something transcendent,
even supernatural The chapter shows reverence in a wider context that does not diminish its spiritual connotations, but rather shows its importance and relevance to teaching in today’s classrooms.
These are destitute times for those in PK-12 teaching and others, such as ourselves, who help prepare and work with them. The sad signs of the times are on the surface of the language we use in public media and educational
reports to talk about schools and teachers. The signs, however, are subtle; they involve naming the absent, which is one of the critical components of any freedom project. Here are some words and phrases that one might expect to be prominent in the public rhetoric regarding the moral craft of teaching yet are almost entirely absent: style, hospitality,
moral luck, irony, soul, privacy, emptiness, and tragedy (see Garrison & Rud, 1995). There is surprisingly little moral and even less aesthetic language in the media and political discourse about teaching. Instead,
Reverence and Teaching: The Forgotten Virtue 155
we hear about human capital, high standards, accountability, work preparedness,
and high-stakes testing. Such public rhetoric impoverishes a teacher’s ability to comprehend their calling. Our paper will explore something that provides an implicit moral critique of such impoverished rhetoric—reverence in teaching. Reverence is an unnatural absence in the contemporary education conversation. Our paper is an effort to provide
reverence a proper place in the national conversation about the art of teaching.
Drawing upon the work of Paul Woodruff, we recover and elucidate a definition of reverence and link it to teaching. We continue this recovery project by locating reverence as a cardinal virtue, namely, one found across cultures. We suggest recovering virtue ethics and then using it to form part of the basis of good teaching. We then discuss the feelings and emotions that accompany reverence while connecting them to instances of sensitive and good teaching. We look at the role that reverence plays in reflective morality through the realization that moral inquiry is necessarily
dependent upon learning from others, and is thus always incomplete
and provisional. Those who proclaim otherwise readily fall victim to imposter virtues.
Before reading further, please pause to name some other words and phrases you wish people would use to talk about the profession of teaching.
It is not always easy. We urge you to look away from popular speechifying.
First, look within. Next, think about your conversations with other dedicated teachers, your dialogue with students (and not just your best ones), and your conversations with spouse or lover. Finally, can you remember
what first called you to teaching? Remarkably, over the years, we have found that pre-service and award-winning veteran teachers find it equally difficult to express the passion and pleasures of the call to teach (See Hansen, 1995 and Lortie, 1975). Reverence involves the vague feeling
of awe as well along with emotions such as humility, shame, and respect.
1 The word “affectivity” derives from the Latin affectus, which is a state of openness that leaves us vulnerable to what is outside and beyond us, which attracts and moves us in many ways. It is not just passive “feeling.”
We will approach reverence through affectivity, although we will not restrict ourselves to the affective and active domain alone, as we begin
by working toward a definition of reverence for our purposes.
PERCEIVING, PORTRAYING, AND DEFINING REVERENCE
Reverence arises when we have as sense of something vastly greater than ourselves that invokes our capacity for feelings of awe before its magnificence as well as emotions of humility, respect, and shame before it and within the community that shares our sense of wonder.2 We must have the experience; we must intuitively understand the feelings and
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emotions that accompany reverence if we are ever to grasp the idea. It has us before we ever have it. Still, it is worth striving to define the idea, but we do believe that in its fullness the experience of reverence overflows the banks of any cognitive concept or category that we might construct to contain it. Therefore, our paper begins by probing the meaning of the word through portrayals in hopes of developing a richer appreciation later. Here are two depictions of teaching acts, moments, and insights that we think have the affective quality reverence requires:
The kids educated and enlightened me. The stories they told, while often quite personal, allowed me to see more clearly the larger picture, the struggles and triumphs that had shaped their lives and those of their families. They also forced me to take a fresh look at how I fit into that bigger picture—to step back and look at my own hands. It was a reawakening for me, really, but it was only a beginning. I knew I had a lot yet to learn about the kids who called me their teacher. (Michie, 1999, p. 85; see also pp. 6 and 89)3
You ask me why I’m here; it has to do with love. Education’s about getting a kid to love words, love language, to love to be able to manipulate numbers. That’s what it’s really about. The good teachers I had, I remember—they had a love for the subject,
and somehow they transferred that love of the subject to me. Educators have to be motivated by love . . . . You have the opportunity
to present them with a love of learning. The desire to know after you’re gone. (Michael Johnson in Rose, 1995, p. 217)
These statements show teachers open to the passions, ideas, and ideals of their students and the subject matter they teach in answering their call to create a community of learners. Although Johnson leaves off at the love of knowing, his statement implies not only a reverent sense of love, but a wise one as well. One might well maintain that the whole passage is about the proper flow of the form of love the Greeks called “eros” to pedagogical ends.4 Passionate desire is also the source of all motivation. There is never any need to motivate a live creature to act; they act by virtue of their living passions. The secret of motivation is the proper direction of passions, the proper education of eros. Hence, motivation itself is worthy of a teacher’s reverence, although we should approach it with a sense of humility.
Often, delineating reverence is more a matter of affective and imaginative
perception than cognition, although that too is important. It is more about being somebody than just knowing something; nonetheless, we need some more or less definite idea about what we mean when we
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speak of reverence. Here is our working definition:
Reverence is a sense of human limitation, imperfection, and our appropriate place in the order of things accompanied by the actualization
of our capacity for awe, humility, respect, and shame, regarding our sense of something or someone that meets at least one of the following conditions: (1) something or someone that cannot be changed or controlled by human means—something we are powerless to alter; (2) something or someone we cannot create; (3) something or someone we cannot completely understand;
(4) something or someone transcendent, perhaps even supernatural.5
Reverence requires us to recognize not only that we are imperfect, but so is everyone else. Imperfection is simply a part of the human condition. Practically, it helps us get along with others within the reverent community
because we recognize and forgive ourselves and each other even as we strive together to secure our highest ideals. Reverent awareness and the feelings and emotions that accompany it put us in harmony with our selves, our community, and our cosmos. This sense of harmony will become
especially relevant later when we discuss the ethical Golden Mean.
A few examples of “something” that meets one or more of these conditions
are: The preciousness and frailty of life, justice, truth, ideas, ideals, love, death, nature, the creation, creativity, possibility, human potential, and the subject matter we teach. Examples of “someone” include various notions of a Supreme Being or simply a hero or heroine whose capacity for noble acts exceeds the ordinary, such as Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., or maybe just everyday folks like an immensely influential teacher.
We will reflect some on the above passages to exemplify and expand on the idea of reverence while examining the feelings and emotions they invoke
and the understandings they bring. Before we do, however, we would like to make a request. Before reading further, please look at our definition. What do you think of it? How might you improve it? Using your definition
or ours, we urge you to look back at the passages we have provided. In what ways do they seem to express reverence to you? Taken individually or collectively, do they capture what you mean by reverence as you begin to reflect upon it? We ask these questions in part because we sense that there may be some individual idiosyncratic quality to the experience of reverence, although we are not entirely sure. We do know we wish to approach the idea of reverence reverently, and over the years we have been working with this notion, we have found that its meaning continually grows and deepens for us as we talk to teachers, students, friends, even young children. They often say things that cause us to pause and reflect further. We urge you to do the same as you read our text and share your impressions with others.
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Consider Gregory Michie’s remarkable admission: “The kids educated and enlightened me” (1999, p. 85). Here we have an unmistakable comprehension
of human limitation, imperfection, and needfulness. He realizes
that the story of his life intersects creatively with that of his students. It allows him to learn from his students, and as we shall see, a teacher learning from students is one sign of a reverent classroom. Reverent recognition
of human limitation, with the accompanying feelings and emotions,
allows teachers to comprehend that they are needful, incomplete, unfinished, and will never be perfect. Michie recognizes that while we all have the potential to tell unique stories, all stories are ultimately co-creations.
We need other human beings to help us author our story and tell it well. Hence, we must respect our co-authors, or students, and should feel shame when we fail them in honoring the ideals of the learning community
we share.
We cannot make students share their genuinely heartfelt personal stories,
although we can perhaps coerce poorly composed fictional work. Michie did not create the stories his students tell. They are gifts; you cannot coerce or buy the ones that matter most to those who tell them, you may only receive them with appreciative reverence. Such stories are something no teacher can control, although they may work with their students
to better understand and appreciate them. We may or may not be able to fully understand our student’s stories, but that is not the thing of utmost importance. Michie eventually spent a great deal of time learning the language his students preferred for composing their stories (Spanish) and comprehending the culture from whence they came (Mexico and the Mexican-American experience in Chicago). All this learning helped him find his proper place in the classroom, school, and community. He came to understand these stories well enough to work with his students in co-authoring new ones.
Let us look at Michael Johnson’s statement as reported by Mike Rose. Although often clouded by many other feelings and emotions, the experience
of love may nonetheless provide some of the most intense and frequently encountered instances of reverence, and in this case, reverence
for teaching. However, it is important to distinguish reverence from other powerful and pervasive emotions like love. Here we have reverent love where reverence is an adjective modifying the nature of the love. Reverence often modifies emotions in this way. When such modification occurs it transforms the emotion into one of reverence, while the feelings and emotions that gave rise to it may also remain to frame the reverent experience. It is here that our working definition is most helpful.
We believe Johnson expresses a profound reverence for teaching that unites several different aspects of it each of which is worthy of reverence in its own right. Besides a reverence for teaching broadly conceived, at
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the very least this passage includes a reverence for students, a reverence for learning, a reverence for subject matter, a reverence for sharing inquiry
into subject matter with students across generations, and a reverence
for the teacher-student relationship.
RECOVERING VIRTUE ETHICS FOR MORE CARING TEACHING
BEYOND THE REALM OF RULES: THE CARDINAL
VIRTUE OF REVERENCE
Woodruff (2001) argues that reverence is a “cardinal virtue,” by which he means that like courage, justice, prudence, or temperance we can find forms of it in many, perhaps all, cultures.6 Lesser virtues might include individual autonomy, promptness, personal accountability, thrift, hard work, and such, which are associated with the Protestant work ethic of John Calvin. These virtues are widespread, but far from universal. Indeed,
many, perhaps most, people on earth participate in cultures that emphasize the collective nature of self and society as opposed to the concept of atomistic individualism. This is one of the things, along with compliance and a de-emphasis of competition in favor of harmonious cooperation, that separate the Protestant work ethic from, for instance, Confucianism, which likewise emphasizes hard work and thrift (Lim & Lay, 2003). We pick this example of cultural difference among secondary virtues because Protestant work ethic virtues so completely dominate the public conception of teaching in the United States. Meanwhile, teachers too may embrace work ethic virtues, but are much more likely to supplement
them with an ethic of care, compassion, altruism, connectedness, and perhaps even reverence for teaching.
Virtue ethics is concerned with the content and quality of our character.7 The organizing question of modern ethics has tended to be: “What are we morally obligated to do?” Answers to this question yield “duty” ethics or “consequentialist” ethics. The organizing question of ancient ethics was usually:
“What kind of person is it best to be?” Answers to this question yield virtue ethics (see Sher, 1998, p. 1). Duty ethics along with ethical consequentialism
(especially utilitarianism) dominates public morality in the modern age including public discourse surrounding teaching, at least in the West. Duty ethics places a strong emphasis on abstract, decontextualized moral rules, laws, obligations, and rights while utilitarianism emphasizes quantitative
analysis to maximize the greatest good for the greatest number. Anyone
familiar with educational bureaucracy understands how rules regulate and govern that sphere and how technocrats, inspired by E. L. Thorndike, use numbers (e.g., test scores and rankings) to maximize perceived utility. We believe virtue ethics, duty ethics, and consequentialism combine nicely to complement one another, but are distressed that modernity and post-modernity alike have largely forgotten virtue ethics. Meanwhile, among
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the cardinal virtues, reverence is as Woodruff (2001) puts it, a “forgotten virtue.” This fact is especially apparent in the public discussion concerning PK-12 schooling, and much of the discussion among teachers and teacher educators themselves as well, entirely ignores reverence and only pays scant attention to other courage, temperance, prudence, and even justice, much less the secondary virtues common to teaching such as care and compassion. Our paper seeks to remember reverence in virtue ethics and contribute to restoring virtue ethics to its proper place in teaching.
Virtue ethics concerns itself with habits of action, attitudes, values, imagination, affectivity (including feelings and emotions), interests, perceptions,
and desires that serve as motives for individual action. We are particularly interested in the affects of awe, respect, shame, and humility associated with reverence. As Woodruff states: “Virtue ethics takes feelings
seriously because feelings affect our lives more deeply than beliefs do . . . You may learn rules intellectually, and therefore you may learn or forget them very quickly” (2001, p. 6). One might add that if you are a utilitarian, you may also miscalculate, and if you are committed to rules, you may misapply them.
Virtues do not replace rules or careful consideration of consequences. A complete ethical theory includes rules, rights, duties, caring, and concern
about the nature of the truly good. Virtuous persons, however, obey appropriate rules, carry out right action, and execute their social duties
because of the constitution of their character as opposed to external imposition or some putative inner will. Other forms of ethics tend to overlook the unity of the self and its actions because in some way or another, they assume a mind (including the will) versus body dualism. For instance, both duty ethics and utilitarianism tend to assume every individual has a rational faculty that carries out cogent deductions or calculations they only subsequently implement in action unless their will is somehow defective. Once we recognize the unity of the self and its actions,
we will realize that every lapse in virtuous action returns to harm the self and the community (e.g., the school) through which the consequences
of our actions flow.
The emphasis on habits (dispositions) of action gives virtue ethics an embodied, biological matrix out of which ethical action may emerge. Habits are generalized responses to classes of stimuli that impart them with a concrete, universal—even logical—quality. There are bad habits as well as good ones. Here, we are interested in habits as dispositional traits of character that are good for someone to possess. Good practice in any field from medicine to teaching requires a large array of skilled habits ethical and otherwise. We are especially concerned with virtuous habits. John Dewey (1922/1983) states:
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To get a rational basis for moral discussion we must begin with recognizing that functions and habits are ways of using and incorporating
the environment in which the latter has its say as surely as the former. We may borrow words from a context less technical than that of biology, and convey the same idea by saying
that habits are arts. They involve skill of sensory and motor organs, cunning or craft, and objective materials. They assimilate
objective energies, and eventuate in command of environment.
They require order, discipline, and manifest technique. (pp. 15-16)
Generations of educators have ignored the role of habits in teaching. Habits transform raw feelings into emotions by giving them structure and direction (see Damásio, 2003; Garrison, 2003; LeDoux, 1998). Habits
must functionally coordinate with the environment. That means they must incorporate the environment into their functioning. We inhabit our world. When we travel to places strange to us, say from schools in the suburbs to those in the inner city, many of our habits may cease functioning
well, or even at all. Many, perhaps most, of our habits, good and bad, are and will remain unconscious. Growing as teachers involves not only acquiring them, but also becoming aware of having them, and then reflecting on them critically and creatively.
Duty ethics and utilitarianism commonly assume an “ought” versus “is” dualism. Normative (ought) statements are seen as dramatically different from descriptive (is) statements such that you cannot derive an “ought” from an “is.” Such a formalist, deductive approach to ethics tends to denigrate the mediating “is” of human action. Virtue ethics can narrow the gap between the actual “is” and the moral “ought.” Habits provide intelligent guidance and control of affective impulses (e.g., eros). Dewey (1922/1983) declares: “All habits are demands for certain kinds of activity;
and they constitute the self. In any intelligible sense of the word will, they are will” (p. 221). A genuinely virtuous person is somebody that habitually does what they ought to do anyway, even if they do not fully comprehend the reasons or cannot do the calculations. Virtuous people do the right thing, at the right time, in the right way, even if they do not know the right reason, because that is who they are. The popular motion picture Forrest Gump provides an illustration. Gump has good moral habits
as well as moral perception and imagination, but his lack of ability to engage in reflective inquiry is dangerous, as we see in several poignant and often funny scenes in the film. We will discuss the role of intelligent inquiry and reverence in the next section.
Good teaching requires the virtuous habits of moral perception. We cannot respond properly unless we can clearly comprehend what needs
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doing in any unique situation with unique people (teachers, teacher aides, administrators, secretaries, students, lunch room personnel, and parents). It also involves moral imagination. We cannot act properly unless
we can grasp all the possibilities of the situation. For instance, to teach well we must be able to grasp human potential including what Rose (1995) calls “possible lives.” As Woodruff (2001) remarks, “Human potential,
too, can be the object of reverent respect” (p. 160).
Emphasis on traits of character and vague things like moral perception and imagination disturb those committed to entirely rationalist ethics. Virtue ethics is ancient; most contemporary versions trace their origins to Aristotle who provides a rational argument identifying the limit of abstract, universal rules (see Swanton, 2003, p. 1).8 The ideal of those overly fond of rules is that in even uniquely particular cases (e.g., a classroom
discipline problem), there are always rules we can apply to determine
our action. Ultimately, everything is rule-governed. If so, then we may ask how we know when to apply a rule. The answer for the formal, deductive extremist is that we need specific rules, but then how would we know when to apply these more specific rules? We would need rules that are still more specific, and so on forever. Aristotle used this infinite regress
argument over 2,300 years ago to conclude that, “these are matters of perception. If we are always deliberating, we shall have to go on to infinity”
(Ross, trans., 1941, p. 970). Reverence defies complete conversion into rule-based ethics. We do not wish to glorify feeling and intuition. Rather we only wish to put abstract reason reverently into its place.
The ethics of abstract and general rules, laws, and judgment may conflict
with the concrete, sometimes one-time-only requirements of the ethics
of care (compassion, connection, personal response) and the ethics of virtue. Teachers are members of a caring profession that is nonetheless obligated to the rules of whatever public or private bureaucratic institution
wherein they may find themselves. Ohanian (2001) writes:
But idiosyncratic kids, unique circumstances, and aberrant behavior
require individualistic solutions, which is why behavior checklists and schoolwide discipline policies, matched with steel-encased consequences to match every student misdeed, are a terrible
mistake. We must never forget that when we pass a rule, we have to live with it. (p. 127)
In institutional settings, virtuous teachers must sometimes break rules to save children. However, it is also sometimes necessary to break children for the good of the larger order. Virtues often operate in the gaps between rules, and when rules (or calculations) fail. They aid moral perception and imagination, thereby helping us apply rules more appropriately.9
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THE REVERENT FEELINGS AND EMOTIONS OF TEACHING
Recall that reverence gives rise to feelings and emotions of awe, humility,
respect, and shame. Woodruff (2001) makes an important distinction between reverence as an ideal and feelings and emotions “that may or may not serve that ideal” (9). “You can never follow an ideal too closely, but,” he declares, “you can have too much—or too little—of the feelings to which it gives rise” (9). What we seek is Aristotle’s Golden Mean where we avoid extremes of excess or deficiency. Recall too that reverence puts us in our place thereby providing harmony with our selves, community, and cosmos. Reverence helps us find the Golden Mean. The feelings and emotions that arise from reverence help us balance our selves while putting
us in right relationships with others.
A cross-cultural ideal, we find much the same principle as the Golden Mean in the doctrine of the mean in Confucianism and the middle way in Buddhism. The Golden Mean is not like balancing on a seesaw. As part of virtue ethics, it introduces an aesthetic dimension rarely found in duty and utilitarian ethics. Dewey (1932/1985) expresses this aspect well: “The Greek emphasis upon Kalokagathos, the Aristotelian identification of virtue
with the proportionate mean, are indications of an acute estimate of grace, rhythm, and harmony as dominant traits of good conduct” (p. 271). The Kalokagathos refers to the fact that the good, the beautiful, and the harmonious are one. Regardless of what virtue, including reverence, that is at the forefront at any given moment, a virtuous person blends and balances their virtues according to what the context of action requires
right now. Similar remarks hold for emotions such as respect and shame that accompany the ideal of reverence. In examining these feelings
and emotions, we must constantly seek the Golden Mean.
According to Woodruff (2001), reverence is without creed. What he means is that what he calls “bare reverence” encompasses more than any specific belief system, or any particular belief at all, including beliefs in God or Gods, something fearsome, someone that is perfect, and so on (see Chapter 7). Disbelief is not necessarily irreverence. Instead, he proclaims
that the “principal object of reverence is Something that reminds us of human limitations” (p. 65). Therefore, it is not surprising that he would, correctly in our opinion, proclaim that the primary feeling of reverence is awe and that he would classify awe as “a feeling rather than an emotion” because “it tends to have objects that are not distinct and may occur in the absence of articulate belief” (p. 65). Awe is the feeling one has when confronted by the unchangeable, incomprehensible, or transcendent entirely beyond human power. Woodruff is right, “awe is the most reverent of feelings” (p. 147).
Genuine awe is so inarticulate because its object lies beyond the limits
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of language. At best, poetry, or the kind of narratives we employed as examples earlier, may only point at it. Over the years, we have known many amazing teachers, yet we have noticed that when we ask them why they find teaching so meaningful in spite of its many challenges, they are usually inarticulate. They cannot find the words to express what they feel and the words they do find are usually woefully inadequate. We think they are simply in awe of teaching and, in many cases, in reverent awe. In spite of the many frustrations, if you still find teaching truly remarkable, try expressing it to others, or even to yourself, in words. The results may surprise you.
Respect and shame differ from awe in that they are emotions involving
specific (even if false) beliefs about distinct, definable objects. Here is how Woodruff (2001) differentiates reverence from respect:
You can have too much [or little] respect, and you can have respect
for the wrong things . . . But if reverence is a virtue, it can never require of you anything that is wrong. So reverence does not always require respect, and reverent people will feel contempt
for whatever deserves contempt. (p. 66)
Remember, reverence requires the recognition of limits and human imperfection. It puts everyone that shares such reverence in their place, their right place within the larger community. However, we require intelligent
inquiry to form a judicious judgment allowing us to respect the right things or the right persons in the right balance at the right time given the situation. Since situations change and persons grow, one’s right place for any give task may change. Wise and intelligent teachers know how to follow students as well as lead them. Bare reverence requires neither
intelligence nor respect. However, shared reverence ushers forth respect as well as shame. Reflecting on what we respect introduces an intelligent, cognitive element beyond bare reverence.
Emotions of respect accompany reverence as naturally as awe. When members of a learning community share reverence for something greater
(e.g., the subject matter, the community, unique human potential, etc.), then they should show a degree of respect for every other member. For instance, we all share human life; we are all mortal, we all know love, joy, and sorrow, and we all hope and dream. Reverence for the human condition can unite us across vast differences of culture and religion. It may well be the supreme virtue of the multicultural classroom. Albert Schweitzer talked about reverence for life and the fellowship that bears the mark of suffering (Rud, 2007; 2011). Still, part of the human condition
is that we all feel pain, suffer, grieve, and die; of course, we may also all know peace, joy, and enduring life through our children. Reverence for life must express care and compassion for suffering while seeking and
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celebrating joy and peace. A teacher’s reverence for life in the classroom will compassionately ameliorate suffering while seeking to bring about and celebrate joy.
Common ideals unify a community. Such ideals as the love of learning and the love of subject matter bind together any learning community. Right respect puts us in our place within the community. Minimally, we should respect all members of our learning community. However, we should not respect everyone the same. Some express the values of the community better and less than others do. We should extend respect to others and ourselves according to our contributions to the classroom community. This means that sometimes students may be more worthy of respect than teachers.
Woodruff (2001) narrows the notion of respect for practical purposes in a way useful for the practice of teaching; he remarks: “You owe reverent
respect to anyone who satisfies two conditions—he or she (1) belongs to a practice in common with you, and (2) recognizes his or her position in the practice” (198). Respect is an emotion of appreciation, special consideration,
or thoughtfulness for others. “Respect is a gift,” writes Woodruff
(2001), “between teacher and student” (p. 189). Like agape, the gift of respect is only good if it continues to circulate freely. We may express thoughtful consideration for those with whom we may have profound professional and even religious disagreement if we recognize that we all are equally humbled before a shared mystery or that we pursue many of the same values such as justice, truth, or learning. Mutual respect in devotion
to a shared idea or ideal may bind people together even when it is obvious that some should be held in much higher esteem than others because
of their superior wisdom, moral character, or ability. All are equally humbled before the might of the mystery. Even criminals or classroom mischief-makers deserve a modicum of respect when it comes time to distribute justice. That is why we should ameliorate the severity of our judgment when the transgressor is contrite.
Classroom discipline should be reverent; it should never be an ego struggle between teacher and student. It helps teachers find the Golden
Mean in disciplinary action. Teachers must show special respect for the ignorant who only require education to become better people. In the classroom community, it is possible for all to share reverence for learning, the quest for meaning, human potential, the ideals of human flourishing, reverence for life, and democracy, even though some realize these things better or differently than do others. After all, overcoming ignorance
is perhaps the central task of teaching. Teaching is an altruistic, knowing, and caring profession wherein we must be willing to acknowledge
occasions when our students know more and practice compassion better than we. Everyone stands to learn something from everyone else
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in a truly reverent classroom. However much we may know, it is but a drop in an endless ocean. Reverent teachers will acknowledge their own limitations. Besides, the good is always beyond knowledge alone.
Shame and respect are intimately connected: “You cannot feel shame without feeling respect for something larger than yourself” (Woodruff, 2001, p. 72). The distinction is that respect is for others in the community
and shame refers to our own shortcomings (p. 65). Teachers may show reverence for the lives of students, recognizing and realizing students’ full potential, dedication to self-transcending (but not self-eradicating) care and compassion for students, commitments to the truth of what we teach, and much more. Teachers who revere these and other ideals of their profession will feel shame when they fail to live their lives according to their values. In reverent classrooms, teachers and students alike may feel shame when they fail the higher powers that rightly govern their shared community.
Whereas guilt tends to arise from a violation of one’s internal values accompanied
by regret and responsibility regarding some specific thought, feeling, or action, shame involves the whole person in regards to a violation
of some deeply held social or cultural value. Hence, we may feel ashamed of thoughts, feelings, and actions unknown to others and guilty about things of which others approve. Shame is more about the whole person in the larger community whereas guilt tends to confine itself to some specific aspect within the individual. We may feel generally good about ourselves and guilty over some one thing. Shame pervades the self.
Like respect, shame is not always reverent. “Without reverence, we may feel shame as the pain of being exposed to other people for having violated
community standards,” Woodruff (2001) writes, “and this is not a virtuous response, because it has nothing to do with right or wrong” (p. 63). However, with reverence, we become exposed to ourselves regarding the ideals we hold in awe with others, which leads to virtuous habits of recognition and response.
Shame is often a more useful emotion than guilt because it presses us to live better lives in relation to others and the greater self, which is ensconced in socially shared ideals, not just our own inner self. Like any emotion, shame or guilt is good or bad depending on the situation and the values involved. We should feel shame when we have betrayed an ideal we and other members of our community hold in reverence. However,
we must never allow others to shame us unless we have in fact fallen short of what our ideal requires of us. Like reverence itself, we must always
inquire into whether or not we should in fact feel shame at some act. We should form our own intelligent judgment and not just accept that of others who may not be acting reverently themselves.
We are reverent when we acknowledge our human limitations and imReverence
and Teaching: The Forgotten Virtue 167
perfections, including the limits of knowledge and values. The opposite
of such reverent humility is what the ancient Greeks called “hubris,” which expresses itself as an overweening pride and trust in rationality accompanied by a sense of invulnerability such that we need not attend to the thoughts, feelings, and actions of others, especially subordinates. Too often, such hubris accompanies dogmatic and tyrannical teaching.
We must distinguish humility from humiliation. Reverent humility involves
right relationship with other people and the universe as a whole. It is modest, and never arrogant, rude, or contemptuous. Proper humility respects others, but it also respects itself since part of finding one’s right place involves learning where one may make their best gifts to the greater
good that creates meaning and value for others while bringing appropriate
improvement to oneself. Humiliation is submissive, debasing, and frequently harmful to not only oneself, but also the larger community.
Humility involves self-eclipse not self-eradication. Reverent humility
does not hesitate to assert itself courageously for the greater good. The linguistic root of the word “good”—gód, originally “fit, adequate, belonging together,” has the same root as in the words gather and together.
Goodness involves fitting together in proper functional relation. It involves dynamic, not static, continuously evolving harmony among co-creating individuals. Such creative harmony realizes that disharmony is part of the rhythm of life. Good communities require and cultivate difference and diversity, but do so for a common (if sometimes evolving) good. While differences are essential to creativity, they can also cause destruction when not placed in proper relationship. Living in a dynamic, ever-evolving universe requires continuous moral creativity. Humility and goodness does not mean conformity. Indeed, in the next section, we will show how critical-creative inquiry that questions the customs of a community, including what we are told is worthy of reverence, is itself an act of highest reverence.
Approaching human limitation with appropriate humility allows teachers
to experience a sense of grace that something (e.g., justice, righteousness,
the subject matter, and such) or someone (e.g., teachers, colleagues, and so on) greater than their individual egos sustains them. A reverent attitude puts them in their proper place, keeping them from acting like little gods (or tyrants) or sinking to the level of beasts in fits of rage. It allows teachers to relax and enjoy the fact that they do not always have to be in control to teach well. Often they can depend on others in the community such as parents, administrators, and even the students themselves.
Once we recognize that we live by the grace of forces we cannot fully comprehend or control, reverence for life and recognition of human
limitation can complement each other.
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REVERENCE, IRREVERENCE, AND “IMPOSTER VIRTUES”
Dewey distinguishes between customary and reflective morality. Such cultural institutions as business, religion, government, and education (e.g., National Council for the Accreditation of Teacher Education, or NCATE) sanction customary morality. The customs of the body politic inscribe themselves on individual human bodies as habits. In customary morality, the good (commonly determined through consequences) and the right (duty, rules) along with virtue and vice often have a transcendent,
supernatural sanction (God, Reason, etc.) that lies beyond question and inquiry. Dewey (1908/1978) declares: “In customary morality, there is no choice between being enmeshed in the net of social rules which control activity, and being an outlaw” (p. 168). Two of the major moral prophets of the twentieth century, Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr., embraced their outlaw status and chose Henry David Thoreau’s “civil disobedience” as their method to secure social change; that is, deliberate,
reflective law breaking as their method of social reform. In itself,
docile or coerced compliance to customary morality does not make a teacher moral.
In virtue ethics, customary morality arises out of the epideictic rhetoric of praise and blame that prevails within a cultural tradition. It forms our habits of moral action. Because of its emphasis on often unconscious, embodied habits of action, virtue ethics is especially subject to the dogmatism
of unreflective morality. Dewey (1932/1985) remarks:
In customary morality it is possible to draw up a list or catalogue of vices and virtues. . . . The acts approved and disapproved have therefore the same definiteness and fixity as belong to the customs to which they refer. In reflective morality, a list of virtues has a much more tentative status. (p. 255)
Sockett (2012) makes a distinction between truth as a property of statements
and truthfulness as a property of persons (p. 57). He also proclaims:
“As the general pursuit of truth is a moral enterprise itself, intellectual
virtues are ipso facto moral virtues, although the reverse need not be the case” (p. 55). It is here that the cardinal virtues of reverence, justice, and courage become foremost. Indeed, we would suggest that these cardinal virtues unlike others such as accuracy, clarity, consistency might always work in the reverse.10 Consider reverence for truth. Let us look at the role reverence might play in reflective morality.
Ordinary virtues such as those of the Protestant work ethic are culturally
contingent and might not work well in other contexts. Indeed, we cannot say for sure they are virtues within a particular culture including our own unless we engage in reflective inquiry. Even then, a mere list will
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not make for satisfactory moral action unless we can determine which ones are most appropriate in a specific context and then combine them according to the Golden Mean. That too calls for inquiry.
Truth, or what Dewey more modestly calls “warranted assertabilty” to stress the falsifiability of any truth claim, can inspire a reverential attitude when we realize it transcends the human condition. Even if you believe we socially construct truth merely to serve finite human purposes, it must still satisfy objective conditions beyond human control. Finite creatures are not and never will be omniscient; they will never completely understand everything,
including the mystery of their individual selves, other individuals (e.g., students), or humankind (e.g., the classroom community). Woodruff remarks: “Reverence in the classroom calls for a sense of awe in the face of the truth and a recognition by teachers and students of their places in the order of learning” (p. 191). Recognition of human limitation humbles all, teacher and students alike, before the mystery of the unknown and, perhaps, unknowable. Even a proclamation from a divine source requires inquiry to interpret it correctly and to make sure the proclamation does not really issue
from a perfidious source that would lead us to perdition. We may continuously
improve our knowledge, but it will never prove perfect. However, teachers may acquire the habits of reverence and critical reflection and teach them to their students by personal example, precept, and shared practice.
Truth can never be the possession of only one person, including a teacher, however astute. The quest for truth and understanding belongs to every member of the community, including the classroom community, who answers the call, including those who have come before and those who are yet to come. We find this in Michie’s (1999) simple declaration:
“The kids educated and enlightened me” (p. 85). Reverent teachers are open to learning because they know they are vulnerable to the shifting
contingencies of existence and recognize that even the most assured position is subject to refutation. Reverence for truth alerts teachers to the permanent possibility of error whether it be in the subject matter they teach, the methods they use, or the social context of the community within which they teach. Good teachers exemplify such reverence to their students because they know they need their cooperation to realize the greater good they all seek to secure. This is why Woodruff avers:
Reverent teachers believe that students can match them in hunger
after knowledge, that they can learn what they wish to, and that they need to make learning their own. . . . Obviously they are unequal in attainments; that is why they need to be reminded of the equality they have in reverence for the truth. Respect is a feeling that goes with sharing a great project, one that has an aim worthy of reverence. (p. 190)
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Surely, the reproduction of cultural knowledge and wisdom is worthy of supreme reverence. So too is passing on the critical attitudes and skills of examining a cultural inheritance for its flaws as well as developing the creative capacities to not only imagine alternative possibilities, but the discipline and skill to actualize them. In good classrooms, both teacher and student find their proper place. Shame upon teachers that do not engage in the kinds of practices, including those of critical-creative inquiry,
that at least seek such a result. However much success remains beyond their powers.
Woodruff (2001) calls attention to what he calls “imposter virtues,” which he defines as “ideas that make us feel good about doing bad things” (p. 70). Distinguishing something (some idea or ideal) or someone genuinely
worthy of reverence from imposters is difficult, but doable. Woodruff
provides valuable guidance when he comments: “Imposter virtues generally cloud the mind” (p. 71). There is much to say about imposter virtues; however, we will confine ourselves to what happens when virtues exceed or fall short of the Golden Mean.
One example occurs when those who dogmatically believe that human customs are the will of God, since they can too easily follow a false prophet
just as free peoples who do not question their country’s leaders fail in their democratic duty and may fall into tyranny even as they think they are defending democracy.11 Another example is the false courage of individuals
who take foolish chances by not considering the consequences of their acts.
Teaching is an altruistic and caring profession since it concerns itself with the welfare of others. There is a strong if unstated cultural expectation
that teachers and other caregivers often believe they should sacrifice their time and energy solely for their charges. However, in most circumstances
self-sacrifice only disables the caregiver, thereby damaging their ability to carry out the caring function. Caregivers need to care for themselves
capably if they are to care competently for others. Similar remarks hold for altruism.
Chris Higgins (2011) distinguishes “professional ethics” from “moral professionalism” (p. 9). The latter is concerned with codes of conduct and the sort of dispositions that occupies the NCATE. Professional ethics regards “the relation between the teaching life and the good life” (p. 10). While a useful distinction, we must not allow it to harden into a mistaken dualism. Higgins does not. He recognizes what moral professionalism can contribute to professional ethics without reducing either to the other.
Higgins acknowledges the constitutive character of altruism to those seeking self-actualization in answering the call to teach and explores this at length. However, he does not allow altruism to “devolve into asceticism”
which readily leads to “such problems as teacher burnout” (2011,
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p. 11). He understand what we call social self-actualization, by which we mean that the best path to self-actualization is through proper respectful
relations with others in which our needs and purposes are satisfied in co-creative connection with those of others within a reverent community
wherein each would experience shame should they betray any of the shared ideals. The reverent community strives to actualize the unique potential of every individual member so that individual may make their unique contribution to community and thereby aid every other member to likewise actualize their potential. The result is what Aristotle called “eudaemonia,” which we moderns translate as happiness, but is better translated as fulfillment. Aided by intelligent inquiry, the reverent community
can locate the Golden Mean between excessive asceticism and selfishness. In this way, they may expose not one but two imposters.12
Reverence puts us in our correct station within the community, the cosmos, and within ourselves. It helps us recognize how to give and receive
with gratitude and mutual respect and shows we should be ashamed of greed, which is never good. In the reverent classroom teachers and students simultaneously actualize their individual unique potential by making their unique contribution to the greater good of subject matter, moral community, and more.
Woodruff (2001) suggests we may avoid imposter virtues such as excessive
asceticism and selfish self-actualization by never suspending “our own moral judgment or closing the lid on our own moral compasses” (p. 72). We agree when he insists: “Reverence sets a higher value on the truth than on any human product that is supposed to have captured truth” (p. 39). We also concur when he suggests that reverence “cherishes freedom of inquiry” (p. 39).13 Reverence requires that teachers respect such things as a school’s tradition or its leadership, but it requires more of them than that. We must also critically examine and sometimes criticize our leaders and our community’s values and, when necessary, imaginatively recreate them. This may require the greatest moral courage such as we find in Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr. Reverence for reflection, truth, and inquiry is always higher than reverence for one or another dogmatic assertion of truth.
Irreverence means showing a lack of respect for something or someone.
While irreverence is not a virtue in itself, it is nonetheless required if, upon careful reflection, something the community customarily commends
as worthy of universal reverence proves undeserving. When such sad events arise, we should not act reverently toward them. Sometimes, irreverence is the proper attitude; indeed, sometimes it is what true reverence
requires.14 On the other hand, in our times, there seems to be a tendency to mock even the highest and best. On such occasions, irreverence
is the greatest folly. It destroys individuals and communities by
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corrupting virtuous action. We do not extend suitable respect to others in our community and fail to feel shame when we should. When irreverence overcomes everything of worth, we have entered an era of nihilism that destroys all meanings and values human or transcendent.
1. Unlike vague anoetic feelings and moods, emotions have cognitive content.
They involve believing, knowing, thought, and such. See Garrison (2003).
2. We will distinguish the feelings of awe from the emotions of humility, respect,
and shame more in a later section.
3. We borrow the example of Michie from Rud and Garrison (2010a). Other parts of this paper borrow from that paper as well as Rud and Garrison (2010b).
4. Eros is a primordial, unalterable, uncontrollable, uncreated, incomprehensible,
but not necessarily transcendent force. It invokes an extraordinary sense of human limitation and imperfection accompanied with powerful feelings and emotions of awe and emotions of respect, shame, and humility. It inspired great reverence among the Greeks, as it should for us moderns.
Reverence and Teaching: The Forgotten Virtue 173
Ancient Greek education centered on educating eros to desire the truly good. Plato’s Symposium provides the most famous instance of such education. For Plato,
wisdom referred to “the Good” that lies beyond knowledge alone, although it requires knowledge. You may agree whether or not you accept his particular account
of the matter. Wisdom too is among those things that cannot be changed, controlled, or fully understood. Let us revere it. We find eros released and properly
channeled in the last two sentences of Michael Johnson’s reflection.
5. We owe this definition largely to Paul Woodruff (2001), especially pp. 63 and 117.
6. Woodruff devotes chapters to showing the similarities between reverence in ancient Greece and ancient China (especially Confucianism) and how those influences continue into the modern East and West. He also notes that we may find cardinal virtues in many different cultures although the objects toward which the members direct them often vary.
7. Stated simply, virtues are admirable character traits worthy of praise within a given society. As character traits, they are embodied dispositions (i.e., habits) of action. The epideictic rhetoric (the rhetoric of praise and blame) of a given society praises some dispositions while condemning others. Most teachers are familiar with the phrase “professional dispositions” as commonly used in teaching. The National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education defines professional dispositions as: “Professional attitudes, values, and beliefs demonstrated
through both verbal and non-verbal behaviors as educators interact with students, families, colleagues, and communities. These positive behaviors support
student learning and development.” (See http://www.ncate.org/Public/Newsroom/
NCATENewsPressReleases/tabid/669/EntryId/55/NCATE-Defines-Dispositions-
as-used-in-Teacher-Education-Issues-Call-to-Action.aspx; retrieved April 23 at 10:53 a.m.) The epideictic rhetoric of NCATE praises teacher dispositions associated with learning and is confident they can assess them. We are interested in ethically virtuous dispositions whose intentional goal directedness makes them difficult to assess. Cardinal virtues like reverence may prove especially intractable.
Teaching, like loving, is an intentional act verb. That means it is subject to all the vicissitudes of human intentions that lead to comedy and tragedy. We worry that NCATE lacks the proper sense of tragedy, comedy, and wisdom to properly assess teacher’s dispositions. They are too committed to quantification, miscomprehension of the means-ends relationship, and overly fond of reductive definitions. For concerns about NCATE’s kind of assessment along with some fine ideas on how to carry out intelligent assessment of teacher dispositions, see Sockett (2012, chapter 12). We will examine epideictic rhetoric a bit more below.
8. Swanton (2003) develops modern, “pluralistic” challenges to the ancient sources of virtue ethics. Interestingly, the entry for “Virtue Ethics” in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy mentions Confucianism as another ancient source of virtue ethics for which there is renewed contemporary interest.
9. See O’Neill (1998).
10. Sockett (2012) suggests some especially useful intellectual virtues of inquiry.
They include truthfulness, accuracy, clarity, consistency, open-mindedness, and fairness and impartiality in forming epistemological judgments that together
comprise what he aptly calls “thoughtfulness” (p. 179).
174 National Society for the Study of Education
11. Another example is the false courage of individuals who take foolish chances by not considering the consequences of their acts for themselves and others.
12. Similar remarks hold for parenting as for caring and altruism. We do realize
there are rare occasions of reverent self-sacrifice and ascetic action for the greater good.
13. The pursuit of truth involves intellectual virtues such as open-mindedness and impartiality. Reverence is an unusual virtue in that it can unite moral with epistemic (and artistic) virtues.
14. That does not mean that irreverence is ever the same as reverence; it is not.
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Reverence and Teaching: The Forgotten Virtue 175
Swanton, C. (2003). Virtue ethics: A pluralistic view. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
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JIM GARRISON is a professor of education at Virginia Tech where he also holds appointments in the Department of Philosophy, Alliance for Social Political and Ethical Thought, and Science and Technology Studies.
His research focuses on philosophical pragmatism. Recent publications
include a co-edited work with A. G. Rud Teaching with Reverence: Reviving an Ancient Virtue for Today’s Schools (Palgrave, 2012) and another book co-authored with the Stefan Neubert and Kersten Reich at the University
of Koln, Germany, John Dewey’s Philosophy of Education: An Introduction
and Recontextualization for Our Times (Palgrave, 2012).
A. G. RUD is Distinguished Professor in the College of Education at Washington State University. His areas of research interest include philosophy
of education and the moral dimensions of teaching, learning, and leading. His most recent books are Albert Schweitzer’s Legacy for Education:
Reverence for Life (2011) and edited with Jim Garrison, Teaching with Reverence: Reviving an Ancient Virtue for Today’s Schools (2012), both published by Palgrave Macmillan.
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