A LIBERATING EDUCATION? 1991 McCauley Lecture

Abstract

There are individuals who speak to us in such a way that they call up confidence and conviction in our own process of becoming a whole integrated person. We feel that their expectations of us presuppose our own capabilities and growth and they let us be ourselves, even while they instruct, guide, or explain. We feel free to be ourselves in their presence because they do not need to see us as different than we are. We feel built up through ourselves in their presence and many new things are possible for us to act on. They seem to have a way of focusing their speaking and listening so that their abilities and qualities are not an imposition. In the qualities and abilities belonging to each of us we are for ourselves; then there is something else that we have for one another — that is the work of love. Self‐renunciation means that we make it unnecessary to project Our wisdom, experience and understanding on the other self, so that the other self shines through the opening. This means that we make ourselves a clearing place for others. ¹

¹1 Ronald J. Manheimer, Kierkegaard as Educator (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1977), p. 200.

Notes

¹1 Ronald J. Manheimer, Kierkegaard as Educator (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1977), p. 200.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Anabel Proffitt

Anabel Profitt is Assistant Professor of Educational Ministries since 1989 at Lancaster Theological Seminary, Lancaster, Pennsylvania. She was also ordained Minister in the United Church of Christ in December, 1992.