"You can't teach a man anything; you can just help him to find within himself". Said Galileo. The essence and impartiality of this statement has passed the testimonies of time. 500 years down the line, the message has become more and more important with time. The reason behind the firmness of this principle on human timeline lies in the tenets of human psychology.
Homosepians, undoubtedly got better brain and cognitive skills as compared to other species but most of the important decision of life are still taken on emotional considerations. Teaching is cognitive and learning makes it complete with a feeling of fulfillment. A great teacher is not the one who put the facts in front and tell the reason behind it. But the one who make students realize the facts and instigate the curiosity to find the answers themselves and resulting in an intriguing process.
Learning should be subtle and adroit, moving swiftly like a river and collected like an ocean of knowledge. Only that knowledge sticks to mind that is being used in some part of life. Other stuff keep on evaporating and condensing (on revising) in a cyclical way.
In the process of teaching humanities subject, students get familiar with facts and figures put by the author. They might agree with it or there may be difference in opinion. After all things are not always black and white, there are sometimes shades of grey. In fact an honest disagreement is a proof of working and thinking brain. Such opinions if have credibility and viability, then should be appreciated and debated considering the myriad dimensions possible.
There is no stark line that differentiate between confrontation and disagreement. Its the intent behind the opinions. While disagreement (liberal in nature) have space of working together and taking minority opinion as well. Confrontation (rigid in nature) is a dead lock and there one has to make choice in between. But the two path diverges too much in long run and confrontations can have horrendous impact of the life of organizations, societies, counties and ideologies.
Great leaders could unite diverse people and opinions because of their very nature of respecting difference in opinions. When pacifist Martin Luther King was asked about his opinion on then Army general who was a black, Martin showed respect for the army man. And the justification given by Gandhian was that he judges people based on their own ideals on his ideals.
This is the reason why civilizations survived for thousands of years. And why they still flourish. At time it may look like a dead end but in these situations one should step back and think over the situation all again.
A perfect anecdote I remember from a famous Arab tale in which a father having decided to divide his 17 camels among his 3 sons before death. He said that the eldest son should get 1/2 of all the camels, the second son should get 1/3 of the total and the youngest should get 1/9 of total. Since 17 does not divide either by 2, 3, or 9. The matter stated boiling as brothers loosing their tampers and moving toward confrontation. But they avoided the fight at last minute and reached to an agreement to ask any wise man for solution (Avoiding confrontation and coming to disagreement). A wise man heard the whole case and suggested them to take his camel if it can help them anyway. Now the total camels reaching 18, with 9 going to eldest son, 6 going to younger one and 2 going to the youngest son. Making a total of 17. Then they returned back that last camel to the wise man.
The moral of this whole story is that a meaningful is life is all about avoiding confrontations, allowing disagreements and keep looking for that last camel to solve dead locks.
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