This posting helped me so much,

Nicola

Likewise, when paid with currency the teacher can feel pressure to produce a curriculum that is equal to the money, when these things can never be equal. This can limit many approaches to teaching and learning.

This is a powerful and subtle issue. Whether we teach for currency or not, we must look to see how this choice affects the student and ourselves, each time, with each student. The most important thing for us as teachers is to look.

Currency has a way of standing in for the thing that it is supposed to be able to purchase, as if it were the thing itself, which of course it is not. It as if we are standing at a lunch counter, deciding what to buy, and we tell ourselves that we can have anything on the menu we want with our money, so we value the money as if it were the thing, the food, the substance, which would be absurd, yet at some level we see it that way.

You found this with the student to whom you offered the scholarship – teaching for no money – who failed to show up for the class. If it costs no money, what can it be worth? One way to counter this is to say up front that the teaching must be paid for with something beyond currency, that currency alone – present or not present – is simply not enough.

When I teach for no money, I look for a balance that suits my needs, the student’s needs, and the needs of the teaching relationship between us. I may look for a cultural context that embodies the teaching (or my learning) as something besides teaching (see my post on Teaching as a Colleague). I may ask for non-currency compensation of some sort, a trade. I may ask something very hard to engage the student’s clarity about the deeper cost of the teaching and to show myself that the student is committed. Rarely do I ask nothing at all from an explicit teaching arrangement, as I find it rarely works well.

My experience of food for teaching has proven to be quite different from other types of remuneration. The immediate nature of consumption and nourishment is very concrete. When I have been the one providing food to a teacher, I have been surprised at the degree to which I felt my intention engaged.

I appreciate that you’re stressing the value of bringing the issue to the table for consideration, rather than making a specific judgment about it as being right or wrong.

I’ve struggled with this in my life – on both sides of the fence. There were times I was barely able to pay for teaching, yet wanted to offer *something*. And in some of my subcultures teaching for money is often frowned upon, but when I was called upon to teach more and more, I had to face my inner shame at asking for fair compensation. I teach full time now – because people keep asking – and try to provide outlets for those who can to pay more, and those who have financial need, to pay less or sometimes not at all. People who study with me steadily all have to work on their relationship with money. And I periodically examine my own.

Other thoughts: Sometimes when a full scholarship has been offered, the person has not even bothered to show up. This is not always true, of course. It also happens that when people pay a deposit, they are more likely to attend a weekend class, for example, than if they do not. Money does seem to be a motivator in our culture.

However, I do distrust people who charge what seem to be high rates for teaching. James Ray and his $9,000 for a warrior week that ended in the terrible ’sweat lodge’ tragedy comes to mind, of course.

Just last month, after doing some money work, I joked to some students that I was glad to not have to take a goat with me on the airplane. Money *is* portable exchange. The money buys food for my body and pays my rent, and I appreciate it for that, but in the long run, I teach because the teaching itself feeds my spirit and helps me to learn. I still pay my official teachers, too, whether in time or money exchange. That feels right to me.

Here’s a post written after that recent weekend in which money was one of our topics:
http://yezida.livejournal.com/2010/01/20/

(sorry for the LJ, my web feed is under construction)