Dean Powery on How Humility Leads to Learning
Writing in the (Duke) Chronicle, Chapel Dean Luke A. Powery argues for the importance of humility in education in his essay "Learning humbly."
In it, he cites a parable in the Gospel of Luke in which Jesus says the guests at a banquet should take the lower-ranking seats and the host of the banquet should invite outcasts and others without power.
"Humility makes space at banquet tables for those who are different," Dean Powery writes. "Why? Because humility says, 'You are human too, created in the image of God, and I can learn from you, even though you don’t look like me or act like me or think like me.'”
In applying the parable to college education, he says, "Humility will say in a Duke classroom, 'I welcome your perspectives and viewpoints from business or law or science or public policy or engineering or divinity or the arts or any other discipline, or from your background and family history. You are welcome because your story and insights matter.'”
Humility is valuable beyond the classroom, too, Dean Powery says: "If you want to rise, go low. Many people think that humility is a sign of weakness, when it is actually a sign of strength: you have to be strong in order not to seek self-satisfaction, self-gratification or self-promotion."
Read Dean Powery's column every-other week in The Chronicle.