Education

t is instructive to consult the Master Teacher when we are considering “teaching and learning.”

To be sure, Jesus in His humanity did not know about Bloom’s Taxonomy nor the upgrade by Anderson and Krathwohl, so He did not think about getting his audience to evaluate, or analyze, or apply following the terms we use. Nor did he use active learning strategies—no think/pair/share in the Sermon on the Mount.

However, if you look carefully at what Jesus did, you see that he often challenged thinking including challenging presuppositions, and correcting the illogic of the Pharisees. So, while he imparted a lot of information, he also used phrases like “You have heard. . . but I tell you this.” His audience had to consider that the Old Testament laws on divorce really did not get to the heart of the matter. Jesus offered that correction in his challenge to think about God’s original intent for a husband and wife to stay together as “one flesh” and that only men and women’s hardness of heart led to God’s concession in allowing divorce. The same challenge of thinking applied to misconceptions about hatred (tantamount to “murder”)