The Skillful Teacher

Fear of the Unknown
Change entails unknowability. Since any learning episode entails
broadening horizons, knowledge, and skill sets, there is the pre-
sumption that we will be in an altered state at its end. The fear of
the unknown (which is what this altered state represents) is often a
massive inhibitor to learning. For many people routine, habit, and
familiarity are leitmotifs for the conduct of their lives. Learning is
framed as a quest for certainty, for a system of beliefs or structure that
they can commit to for life. Consequently, any teacher who invites
people into learning by emphasizing its transformative power is
unwittingly only strengthening their resistance. Erich Fromm’s books
(1941, 1956a, 1956b) chronicle the human desire for security, for not
learning, that is manifest in people’s striving for automaton confor-
mity and their willingness to submit to authoritarian rulers.
The human capacity for denial—particularly for denying the
need to change—knows no limits. People committed to eternal ver-
ities can withstand years of dissonant experiences and mountains
of contradictory evidence that call these into question. Perversely,
a law of inverse commitment sometimes seems to apply whereby the
more contradictory the evidence discovered, the more people assert
the self-evident truth of their beliefs. Given this dynamic it should
not be surprising when we encounter students who display a revul-
sion for change. Even students who appear to be committed to
learning and who are enthusiastic in its pursuit sometimes reach a
point where they are overwhelmed by a grieving for lost certainties
and a trepidation about what awaits in the future.