Good ideas!

To get to them we need to make ideas earn our respect

People are innately worthy of respect within the framework of Teacherly Authority, but ideas are not, ideas must earn respect.  Put another way, some ideas are better than others and the best ideas help us all to flourish.  To find the good ideas and weed out the poor ones we need to use the full range of cognitive skills available to us and modern curricula and pedagogies provide an appropriate focus on developing these skills.

However, under Behaviourist practices there is a strong tendency to integrate ideas with identity.  We can achieve respect, for example, by giving the ‘right’ answer or holding the ’right’ point of view, we can be sanctioned if we disagree.  This integration of an idea with our identity makes it hard for us to change our mind or even properly evaluate the ideas we hold (and of course, that has been the whole point!).

An essential element of moving forward towards a society that can face up to the existential threats we all face, is to separate our ideas from our identity so that we can critique them and change them using critical thinking skills.  It is Active Open-Mindedness (one of the four core capacities that underpin teacherly authority) that can help us to do this - as adults - and by practicing this around them, inoculate our young people from going down this path in the first place.

Mediating relationships through Teacherly Authority thus enhances the effectiveness of critical thinking skills.

Learn about Teacherly Authority at a one-day program (Re)Building Teacherly Authority on 27th October (Melbourne) and 10th November (Sydney).  For more information and to register for either event, go here.  To get a fuller overview of Teacherly Authority, go here.

John Corrigan is an expert in helping individuals to bring their whole of mind to their daily life and increase their effectiveness and the effectiveness of those around them. This expertise scales from the individual to the team to the organisation.  At the core of this work is the concept and practice of teacherly authority.  Earlier blogs can be found here.

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