Teaching is not just about information transfer

In The Teacher, St Augustine is attacking a particular view of what teaching is - the idea that it is just about transferring information from one mind to another, just about learning a collection of facts.

St Augustine isn’t very impressed with this concept of teaching:

Augustine is more interested in teaching as a way of turning someone away from worldly concerns and towards things that are sacred and holy.

He attacks this ‘information transfer’ model of teaching by arguing that it doesn’t make any sense and is in fact impossible. He begins by arguing that all teaching occurs through language and signs:

However, according to Augustine, this leads to a problem. He starts by thinking about what a sign is:

So the sentence, ‘I am sitting in a chair’ is only a sign if it signifies something - i.e. the fact that I am sitting in a chair. If I’m not actually sitting in a chair then the sentence doesn’t signify anything and can’t actually be called a sign.

Another way of putting it is like this - according to the information transfer model of teaching, it is the job of the teacher to inform. And if a teacher is going to teach you something, or inform you of something, then they must tell you true sentences. A true sentence must signify, or point to, something. If the teacher says ‘I am sitting in a chair’ and they are not sitting in a chair, then the sentence isn’t informative.

So to understand a sentence, you must know what that sentence signifies —i.e. Know the fact that makes the sentence true.

The learner’s paradox

But this leads to a paradox:

Imagine that I am told, ‘The battle of Hastings occurred in 1066’. If this sentence does signify something, then I must know what the sentence signifies - i.e. the fact that the Battle of Hastings occurred in 1066. But if I don't know what the sentence signifies, then the sentence is not informative - i.e. it teaches me nothing. But if I do know what the sentence signifies, if I am aware of the fact, then the sentence doesn’t teach me anything.

Augustine describes this paradox like this:

Plato came up with a very similar paradox a thousand years earlier:

Traditionally, Plato’s solution to this problem is understood as being that we somehow remember or recollect things that we already knew before we were born - that we don’t really learn anything new at all. Augustine thought this was a silly solution because if Plato was right, everyone would have the same level of knowledge, but they don’t. Augustine thinks that there are genuine instances of learning - not just recollecting things we already know.

The inner light of truth

Augustine’s answer to the problem is that true learning is a matter of an inner episode of awareness that he calls illumination. I am sure that most of you will have felt a moment, probably in a maths class, or when doing a puzzle of some sort, when you suddenly understand the solution to something and go, ‘A-ha!’ This is the moment of illumination that Augustine is thinking about.

For Augustine, this is a sacred moment. He describes us being taught, not by the teacher, by the person standing at the front of the class, but by the inner light of truth. Augustine understood this inner light of truth was a manifestation of Jesus - the Word of God, the Logos. He quotes Jesus telling his disciples…