Teachers and Sowers

Abstract

This chapter begins by considering the relation between the models of the teacher and the sower, which might seem very similar to each other. In Plato’s Phaedrus, the thought leader sows ideas by teaching; and teachers leave behind students capable of teaching others, so extending the original teacher’s legacy. The models are nonetheless distinct, even if they often converge: the teacher model focuses on the relationship between the leader and their immediate followers, stressing the need for rational communication; the sower looks beyond the relationship between the leader and their immediate followers towards subsequent generations, and to the perpetuation of ideas. Most of the chapter is then taken up with two case studies that show the two models working hand in hand: Florence Nightingale, who revolutionized nursing, and Margaret Mead, the US anthropologist, who helped transform attitudes to the family and sex in twentieth-century America.