What could an educator or learner do in respond to adverse working or learning condition? My response is: that is the challenge we all need to take up and respond to throughout our study and career.
How about the following strategies?
2. Develop ourselves into resilient learners.
It is hard to overcome all the difficulties if we were to tackle the problems alone. Would we need the help and support of others?
Dave Snowden shares his belief here about engagement and enlightenment. He says:”What the world needs is engagement, not personal enlightenment.”
The evangelicals were concerned with personal salvation, by coming to know the Lord Jesus as your personal saviour you were redeemed and your task was to bring others to the same enlightened state. Justification by faith alone to place it in a more historical context. In opposition there were those of us who were with James 2:24 Ye see then how that by works a man is justified, and not by faith only. Our view was that engagement with the world, with its political and other realities was at the heart of justification and also redemption.
My question is: “What is the world?” Would the world be the organization? The community? The society? The network? Yes, it is important to engage with the world, with its political and other realities. I would however still think personal enlightenment is one of the most important goals of life, in order one could become a person of value with integrity, but also be receptive to a diversity of views different from ours.
What is the purpose of engagement? Wouldn’t engagement be of a certain purpose? To learn, to be knowledge-able, to be wise through those engagement and have a better understanding of the world. Engagement to me then relates to our relationship with the social world, our community, our relatives, friends and neighbors. This is also part of our social need, if we are to sense what is happening in the world.
Enlightenment often associates how we establish our inner values of life, through a search for truth, likely through religion, or a reflection of our experiences. If I were to coin the relationship between the two – engagement and enlightenment, I think they are the yin and yang of our life in an evolving cycle, where we need both to engage with others and connections, and to grow into an enlightened self.
I think what we are missing is a sense of value within ourselves, when we neglect the needs of others.
What the world needs is love. Without love, engagement could be superficial, and become instrumental. The world needs our engagement, but also needs our personal enlightenment, so each could contribute both to the world, and to our own salvation.
That’s how I would respond to adverse condition. By a constant review of my belief, and Faith.
How about you?