Killing Off Bad Education Metaphors
“…Metaphors are dangerous. Metaphors are not to be trifled with.”
- Milan Kundera, from The Unbearable Lightness of Being
Given the dumpster fire that the recent years of pandemic life and political strife have been for so many of us, I thought a dash of rage and fury might be in order. A little righteous murder might just be a wholesome thing now and again. In that spirit, I’d like to kill off a few hellacious ways we conceive of teaching.
Teaching is too precious a thing to be contorted and shoved into limp language and inept metaphors. Yet bad images abound in our profession. They slither into our thinking, normalize malaise, and bastardize what’s sacred. What should be a priceless, energizing relationship between teacher and student gets reduced to a transaction, an exchange, or worse—a chore—when constrained by tired assumptions and careless thought.
From a Zen perspective, this distortion is more than semantic. Words and metaphors shape the way we see—and what we fail to see. A bad metaphor isn’t just clunky; it’s karmic. It gives rise to conditions that beget further delusion. If we mistake teaching for delivering content, we may never notice the shimmering presence of the learner before us. We fall asleep in the act of what should be awakening.
Zen doesn’t traffic in static roles. There is no fixed “teacher” and no fixed “student.” The moment we cling to identity—I am the knower, you are the one in need—we've already fallen out of intimacy with the present moment. In the truest classrooms, the boundary dissolves. Sometimes we point; sometimes we bow. Always, we practice together.
In the coming posts, I’ll invite us to do away with a few metaphors and concepts that infect our pedagogy. Some are obvious—though no less pernicious for their familiarity. Others are sneakier, mutating our foundational assumptions about the purpose and form of teaching. Either way, these suckers need to go.
Ready the shotgun.
Invite the vultures.
Something’s about to die. It’s necessary. I promise we’ll all feel better afterward.
But before we get to shooting, take a long breath. Turn inward. Consider the notions that may be quietly shaping your bedrock beliefs about teaching—because not everything worth killing comes with a warning label.
REFLECTION
What common metaphors do you or your colleagues use to describe the work of teaching? What is the effect of using these metaphors?
Where do you see that teachers have internalized fallacies? What language do we use to make these fallacies palatable?
