Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 11.29

Neither in writing nor in reading will you be able to lay down rules for others before you shall have first learned to obey rules yourself. Much more is this so in life.

—Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Book 11.29 (tr Long)

I have soldiered on as a barely competent teacher of philosophy, literature, and history, but every so often I am asked to teach other subjects, like Latin, or algebra, or one of the natural sciences. This fills me with dread, and I will resist the requests, which often become firm demands, as vigorously as I am able.

I do this not to be contrary, but rather because I’m not confident I will do a decent job at it. I can hardly be expected to explain a subject to others when I lack a basic mastery of it myself, and it seems a dishonest disservice to claim to teach what I do not really know.

Take Latin. I can muddle my way through most texts, often with the help of a dictionary and a grammar reference, but I was a terrible student of the language, and I simply don’t have all the tools I need ready at hand.

We can surely recognize when we have made a good habit of something, and when the principles behind it have become like a second nature. I feel rather filthy preaching what I have not yet been able to practice.

Similarly, how can any of us teach about the principles of a good life, if we are not managing to live them for ourselves?

Now I am all for what they call “character education”, and I would indeed claim that this is the most important sort of learning to which we can ever aspire; all other things in life are relative and conditional to our moral merit. Yet no fine language, no noble displays, no fanfares and parades will make any difference at all, if we do not first live the values we claim to admire.

I am quite wary of anyone who tells me that he will teach me virtue, and I wonder why he feels the need to tell me this at all. Will not his very example, through all the grind from day to day, already reveal to me what is within him?

When it came to the Latin, they often told me just to teach from the text, use the answer keys in the back of the teacher edition, and stay one chapter ahead of the students. I’m sorry, but I find that terribly sloppy. As they say in academia, that is just passing from the notes of the teacher to the notes of the student, while passing though the minds of neither.

Please don’t tell me you will make me a master of other men, as this shows you do not understand what is important about being human. Please do not even tell me you will make me a master of myself, when you are not yet a master of yourself. Help me to become my own good man by being your own good man.

Written in 6/2009