In the context of teaching and learning, I use “pain” to mean an experience anywhere in the range from minor discomfort to agony.
By “damage” I mean something else: some part of the student’s normal process — physical or emotional or psychological or spiritual — no longer works, because it has endured some sort of strain and has broken. Damage means a system needs repair before it can continue. This may be a sprain, a broken bone, or an emotional discontinuity that leaves the student unable to function as before.
Athletes learn early on that pain and damage are not the same thing. In my martial arts school we were told that damage was what kept you out of class and pain was anything else.
Even so, pain and damage usually exist on a continuum. Pain is often a message that damage may be coming, a warning that there is a strain being endured, some physical or emotional conflict that might result in something tearing or breaking. Damage in the context of a particular study may mean that the study is interrupted, slowed, or stopped, and repair is necessary for the study to resume.
Some teachers believe that students learn best when forced to change in ways that interrupt current pathways, forcing new pathways to develop. If so, how hard can you as a teacher push before this force breaks something in the student? If a teacher guides a student to a new world-view such that the student sees in new ways but can no longer see in the old ways, is this damage? Is it learning? Is it both?
It is part of a teacher’s duty to protect the student from unnecessary suffering and damage in the course of the study. If it is not in the student’s best interest, help them avoid it.
But first you must see it. Look for discomfort and suffering in your students. The better you become at noticing pain in your students, the better you will become at preventing it. When you look, look deep, because students may mask or exaggerate pain, or interpret it in a way that makes it more suffering than it needs to be.
Damage can be even harder to identify. When you push a student and something suddenly seems amiss or shifted, be especially aware. While a broken bone is often obvious, the difference between pain and damage can be subtle, especially in matters of heart and spirit. If the moment contains pain only, it may be that all you should do is be aware and present and perhaps listen while the student works though the change. If damage also, it may be that you need to do more. What you might do after slipping across that line and damaging a student is a topic I plan to address later. For now I recommend that you cultivate in yourself a willingness to address the issue in the student’s best interest, whatever has happened.
Sometimes you will not know until after the event. What seems like damage today may tomorrow be a positive shift in understanding. The bone may be bruised, not broken. It may heal stronger — or it may not. A shift in understanding that leaves a student unable to do things they could do before may have opened the door to more advanced abilities. Or not.
Learning from pain is naturally built into many studies, especially physical disciplines. Pain is information about the movement, perhaps a warning that damage may come. In martial arts it may be an indication that a technique works in some way. In some studies pain can be an indicator that a breakthrough is nearby, that a new understanding is possible. An area of uncertainty or discomfort can be a fertile unexplored territory.
Discomfort or pain often comes with deep learning because learning involves change, and change can be uncomfortable. But this is not the same as a teacher choosing to use pain to teach. Some believe that deliberately causing pain is always wrong, and that pain can never be a positive teaching tool. I think it is not that simple, but I advocate great caution: deliberate use of pain is a dangerous tool, easy to misuse and easy to abuse even in skillful hands. Pain turns into damage easily. The cost to a student if you misstep can be very high. You can find yourself losing the student’s trust. You can find years of careful teaching unravelling or destroyed. You can find yourself breaking the law. I will say more on this another time.
Start by understanding what your teaching work is doing to your students. Every student is different, so what is pain or discomfort for one is unremarkable to another. What will cause harm to one student will leave another unchanged. What will snap a bone on a child may leave an adult with a small bruise.
To teach effectively, you must learn each student well enough to see their discomfort, their pain, and the warning signs for damage.
[...] In Pain and Damage I discussed how important it is to be able to see pain in your student as a potential warning of damage to come. I discouraged teachers from deliberately causing or allowing damage, because damaging a student is very complicated and highly vulnerable to abuse and mistake. I was then questioned by teachers who, in the course of deep teaching, have had students who experience emotional and psychological changes that cause them to feel they have been taken apart, damaged, even destroyed. This is worth more discussion. [...]