ETHICS IN TEACHING

Abstract

A teacher, an educator, a professor, an instructor is a noble profession. The twenty-first century has its own challenges, demands and needs to be tackled. Medieval literature and the beginnings of Slavic literacy in Macedonia are the aspects we are addressing. How to adjust the distant ninth century to today's modern times in a versatile way, interesting to students? How to conduct an exegesis of St. Clement's teachings, the hymnographical verses of St. Naum of Ohrid, the lives of a great many Saints? These are the challenges of the medievalists in the course of studies related to such programme contents. Medieval literature is for the most part theological, excepting the apocryphal literature which is non-canonical. Can the biblical phrase "Be perfect" be perceived in the modern living, and what aspects of interpretation can there be? Does perfection exist, or is there only the feat, the struggle for one's constant self-improvement and advancement towards ontological values? Sophists asked questions such as: Who am I?; Why am I?; What is the meaning of my existence? Existentialists further deepened these questions. We, once again, in the modern age, ask these eternal questions. How to convey the moral aspects of St. Clement of Ohrid in contemporary teaching? How to explain the eternally current issues related to ethics and the code of living in times of "lack" of ethics or its reduction? In St. Clement's didactic teachings, the ethical aspect is not only theological, but universal. In fact, St. Clement of Ohrid, as well as the most prominent educators and their teachers St. Cyril and St. Methodius of Thessaloniki, are cosmopolitan figures. Their aspects are universal codes of life directed towards continuous learning, progress and the light of human existence. Permanent personal growth is a lifelong process in which ethics is at the forefront, along with the remaining contemporary ethical norms of living. Learning ennobles the human personality. Enlightenment in Slavic literature proved that knowledge is the most powerful weapon of mankind.