This is a provocative little pamphlet put out by Parker J. Palmer when he was Dean of Studies at Pendle Hill in May 1976. I recently bumped in to a reference to the pamphlet in Deborah Haight’s excellent Meeting, which talks about the central role of “meeting” in Quakerism as really being an emphasis on community.
Haight references Palmer’s pamphlet and I thought to myself that I’d never be able to lay hands on this obscure Pendle Hill Bulletin from 1976. When I got looking through my stack of pamphlets for something else, it turned out that I had a copy of Meeting for Learning among them. What luck! A local copy is available here.
Here is Palmer on the notion of Meeting.
The Idea of Meeting
Much of what I want to say about education in a Quaker context can be organized around one of Quakerism’s, most central, concrete, yet spacious images, the image of “Meeting”. Among Friends, of course, there is first the Meeting for Worship, but then there is the Meeting for Business… I remember the jogging my mind got when I realized that the use of “Meeting” in all these contexts was no accident; that Friends believed all Meetings can and should be held in the same spirit that informs Worship.
Palmer proposes a model of teaching and learning based on Quakerism’s meeting for worship. The main thrust is that teaching-and-learning is relational. The student-teachers encounter a “third thing” which may be a text or an idea together. It is this search for truth, together, which creates a meeting for learning.
If we are faithful to the image of “Meeting,” we can say even more about the relation of person and person and some third thing. For it is precisely in the rich and unpredictable mix of a triad that some Truth beyond ourselves, some presence we do not create, might break in. So it is in a Meeting for Worship or Business. One speaks, and a thought or a feeling enters the room. Another listens and re-sponds both to the speaker and to what is spoken. As that process moves on, a fuller Light can illumine us all.
Palmer ends the pamphlet with some queries:
Of course it is more in the spirit of Friends to ask questions than to give advice, so though I do not recant the advice already given I want to close with some queries! Here are a few which come to me as I ponder the “meeting for learning;” perhaps there are others you will want to ask yourself:
- Do I come to learning prepared for a genuine meeting between myself, other persons, ideas and texts?
- Do I try, in teaching and learning, to stay close to what I know experientially, and do I take the care to ask the same of others?
- Am I willing to devote the energy necessary to engage my whole self in the learning process, and especially to cultivate those aspects of myself which are underdeveloped?
- Do I take full advantage of the community of learning by sharing my insights with others, and by willingness to test myself against their experience? Do I help foster the learning community in this way?
- Do I appreciate that the consequences of learning will be different for different people, and am I open to unexpected consequences for myself?
- Do I accept the possibility that meeting for learning may change not only my mind but my life?
Published: Jan 23, 2025
Last Modified: Jan 23, 2025
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