Education comes from a Latin root that means “to draw out.” Though I am not opposed to the traditional lecture format, I have always believed strongly that my role as an educator involves not only pouring wisdom into my students’ minds but drawing it out as well. Students, like all people, know far more than they think they know. There is much wisdom buried deep in the subterranean recesses of our souls–if only we can access it. Or, to put it another way, it is not solely by means of our five senses that we gain access to knowledge; true knowledge may reach us as well from outside our spatiotemporal world (via revelation) and from within our heart-soul-mind (via intuition and recollection).
Louis Markos, From Plato to Christ: How Platonic Thought Shaped the Christian Faith, p. 49
I happen to agree. When teaching brothers and sisters in Christ, I rely on Christ as our teacher, the inner witness of the Spirit, and the formation each person has already been received through the ministry of the local church, and often students discover they know much more than they thought they knew.
