I got word this week that a gentle teacher colleague and friend, Mike Brayer, died this week escaping finally a vicious entrapment by Alzheimer’s Disease. Words don’t do much to fill a void left by a friend gone from the earth; but my memories of Mike are particularly strong, so what he left behind has substance for me and for another couple of friends and colleagues.   Fourteen years ago, the year I was sixty-five, Mike, Don Wood, Alan Thomas and I rode our bicycles across America from Florence on the Pacific Ocean of Oregon to the Chesapeake Bay inlet of the Atlantic Ocean at Annapolis, Maryland. What a trip!  I’ll always remember seeing Mike ahead of me sometimes and behind me some of the time.  The important fragment of the memory is his being there… his being.

Thinking about Michael Alan Brayer I am reminded that effective teachers are the ones who respect the questions more than the books full of answers. Good teachers respect the questions and the questioners. The best teachers are not afraid to say, “I don’t know.” They understand that ridicule is not an appropriate response to not knowing.

Especially in matters of politics, religion, and ethics I reject the notion that the best answers to the great questions have already been found.  To hide behind creedal statements asserting that God has provided the answers to all questions is to commit intellectual suicide.  I hope my students knew that I wanted them to be skeptical.