Home » Mind & Soul » Care of the Soul » First Do No Harm

First Do No Harm

© Thomas James Martin

A few years ago, a schoolteacher of my acquaintance began talking about his personal philosophy of teaching. He was at that time a very popular high school English teacher, very hip and attuned to his students and well-liked by them. His personality could be described perhaps as Mr. Chips meets Harley Davidson, a Renaissance man "born to be wild," comfortable riding motorcycles or quoting Shakespeare.

"I could sum it up in four words," he said. "Like the doctors I try my best not to hurt anyone, yeah, 'First, do no harm" is the way I believe about teaching kids." He went on to explain that he had come to this philosophy through years of experience listening and interacting with children. He said that he realized that each child was very different in their aptitudes and needs and did not always fit nicely into a standardized curriculum intent on cultural homogenization. Forcing Shakespeare down the craw of a teenager who is something of a mechanical genius, for example, probably enlightens neither Shakespeare nor the youth.

I must agree. In her never-ending attempts to force learning down my throat, my fourth grade teacher stood me in front of the class and on three occasions tore up my spelling homework in front of my classmates. She was successful, but for years afterward, I cringed inside whenever the scenes rose up out of the cesspool of my suppressed memories and replayed in my mind.

However, I never made overly simple sentences with spelling words ever again; such "babyish" sentences (as she called them) as "the quantity is many" or "the paper is white." To this day, I am a little scared of the short, simple sentence and must check a tendency to pile on phrases and clauses to be sure that I "have enough words in the sentence."

Primum non nocere or "First, do no harm" is identified with the Hippocratic oath that medical doctors take. The phrase is not actually part of the oath but is in some other writings of the great Greek physician. (The oath does refer to "refraining from deleterious and mischievous actions."). Hippocrates, the father of modern medicine, also spoke Greek rather than Latin. You can read a translation of the oath here.

In my own life, I see its wisdom from the attitudes toward the earth expressed in organic farming. I related in my article, Organic Touchstone, the importance that I felt of a holistic relationship with human beings and the earth. With organic farming, I see that I am expressing the virtue of doing no harm when I do not overburden and poison the soil with pesticides, insecticides and artificial fertilizers. Working with the soil, I use natural methods of composting and pest control.

The copyright of the article First Do No Harm in Care of the Soul is owned by . Permission to republish First Do No Harm in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.