When your mother isn’t your teachers

In the United States it’s Teacher Appreciation Week.

At the fine blog Sententiae Antiquae is the wonderful post Reverence Due to Teachers: Aristotle and Alexander for #TeacherAppreciationWeek. As we listen in on what Aristotle taught it’s not a bad thing for those of us here, in the West, to recall how steeped in the binary he was, how stuck in it he learned to be and so taught others as well.

Here’s a fuller quotation of what’s in the snippets of biography of Aristotle by Diogenes Laërtius, with my English translation below that:

ἐρωτηθεὶς τίνι διαφέρουσιν οἱ πεπαιδευμένοι τῶν ἀπαιδεύτων, “ὅσῳ,” εἶπεν, “οἱ ζῶντες τῶν τεθνεώτων.” τὴν παιδείαν ἔλεγεν ἐν μὲν ταῖς εὐτυχίαις εἶναι κόσμον, ἐν δὲ ταῖς ἀτυχίαις καταφυγήν. τῶν γονέων τοὺς παιδεύσαντας ἐντιμοτέρους εἶναι τῶν μόνον γεννησάντων· τοὺς μὲν γὰρ τὸ ζῆν, τοὺς δὲ τὸ καλῶς ζῆν παρασχέσθαι.

On being questioned about his dissection of the schooled from the school-less, he declared, “It’s as precise a difference as the living from the dead.” Schooling he described as being the whole world for the fortunate and as a refuge for the unfortunate. Teachers who school children, he would demand more sharply, are more deserving of honor than parents who just have them. Life just happens of course. But the good life in all its beauty is cultured in education.

What just happened for the little child named Aristotle, as we all know, is that his parents died before he knew them much. We have come to know much more about his father than his mother. Those who schooled him then were surrogates, in effect. We know much about his teachers, all men, no women. When your mother isn’t your teacher, then what? Aristotle’s experience of separation formed the lessons he taught his students. Teachers / parents, Males / females, Masters / slaves, Athenians / barbarians.

There are life consequences to this either / or mentality.

And fortunately there are resistances that make all the difference in the world.

Let me now honor my first teacher, my mother. She taught me to read. She introduced me to teachers who have taught me many many things. Yesterday we spent a few hours together. She continues to teach many, and I am one continuing to learn from her.