Albert Schweitzer’s Legacy for Education pp 43-52 | Cite as
To Africa: From Thought to Conviction and Action
Abstract
Albert Schweitzer and Hélène Bresslau spent years in a slowly developing relationship where he began to see more clearly in the loving exchanges he had with her the path that his life would take. Schweitzer’s solidifying of resolve was deceptively simple and shrouded by passing years. Can we learn, from his fateful decision to go to Africa, about the kinds of decisions made by teachers and other educators, as they commit themselves to a life of service? A close colleague of mine quipped once that we are teachers because we didn’t want to go the extreme route of becoming missionaries. This casual remark has meaning in this context, for the continuum of decisions made by educators about their work links the missionary zeal at one end to the more measured and ordinary decision to teach made by students in education programs at colleges and universities every year. Schweitzer’s decision to make Africa his destination was a radical one. Though the decision making is similar to that of one deciding to teach, such decisions by prospective teachers are not usually as extreme as that of Schweitzer, except in unusual circumstances.
Keywords
Prospective Teacher Unusual Circumstance Casual Remark Mutual Knowledge Missionary ZealPreview
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Notes
- 1.Albert Schweitzer, Out of My Life and Thought: An Autobiography, trans. Antje Bultmann Lemke (Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998), 115. Hereafter OOMLAT.Google Scholar
- 2.David T. Hansen, The Call to Teach (New York: Teachers College Press, 1995). Hereafter Hansen.Google Scholar
- 8.The theory and early practice of The North Carolina Center for the Advancement of Teaching are discussed in Anthony G. Rud, Jr., and Walter P. Oldendorf, eds., A Place for Teacher Renewal: Challenging the Intellect, Creating Educational Reform (1992; repr., Charlotte, NC: Information Age Publishing, 2008).Google Scholar
- 9.As Jo and Walter Munznote, “Lembareni, in the galoa language of Gabon, literally means: we want to try, in a sense of an experiment.” Jo and Walter Munz, Albert Schweitzer’s Lambaréné: A Legacy of Humanity for Our World Today, trans. and ed. from the French edition by Patti M. Marxsen (Houston, TX: Penobscot Press/Alondra Press, 2010) (first published in German, 2005, and in French, 2007), 17.Google Scholar
- 15.I draw upon two translations for the following: Albert Schweitzer, Memoirs of Childhood and Youth, trans. C. T. Bergel (New York: Macmillan, 1931) (first published in English, 1924).Google Scholar
- I use this translation in the citations that follow: Albert Schweitzer, Memoirs of Childhood and Youth, trans. Kurt Bergel and Alice R. Bergel (Syracuse NY: Syracuse University Press, 1997). Hereafter Memoirs.Google Scholar
- 25.Darrell J. Fasching, “Beyond Values: Story, Character, and Public Policy,” in Ethics and Decision Making in Local Schools, ed. James L. Paul et al. (Baltimore: Paul H. Brookes, 1997), 99–122.Google Scholar
- 26.Anthony G. Rud, Jr., “Learning in Comfort: Developing an Ethos of Hospitality in Education,” in The Educational Conversation: Closing the Gap, ed. Jim Garrison and Anthony G. Rud, Jr. (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1995), 119–28.Google Scholar