Dean Powery on How Changing Your Mind is Part of Education
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Students in class
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Students in class
Students in an Intermediate Microeconomics II class.
“As students and educators, recognize that learning is about changing your mind,” Chapel Dean Luke Powery writes in his latest (Duke) Chronicle article on “Changing your mind.” “Learning can be an expansion or deconstruction or construction or a deepening or an enlightening—and all of this is change.”
In the essay, Dean Powery draws on a poetic image from the Book of Jeremiah of God as a potter shaping and then reshaping a clay vessel.
“In this literary context, the potter is a metaphor for God, and God, the potter, reworks the clay into another vessel,” Dean Powery writes. “God pivoted and kept working on the clay to refashion it. God’s plans were not fixed.”
“In this metaphor, the clay is us, and the shape and design of our lives are changed,” he says. “Our plans can be reworked. The major you thought you were going to pursue can change.”