Ancient prophets and philosophers tell us that there are several paths to wisdom: grace, justice, knowledge, reflection, imitation and experience chief among those.

A teacher of more recent lineage goes one better. Athens State University emeritus professor Mark Durm has plumbed the depths of each avenue and packaged them between soft covers. For less than $10 (99 cents if you go the e-book route), the erstwhile educator has provided an entertaining avenue to a smarter, more thoughtful you.

The catch? You’ll need to break out of your comfort zone, he said, engage with others’ viewpoints and admit that the way to growing wiser is through knowing less.

If that last bit sounds like a familiar catch phrase — or the title of a book, which it is: “Growing Wiser, Knowing Less” by Durm (Incio Press, 202 pages) — it’s likely you’ve heard it in one of the professor’s lectures. After nearly four decades of teaching psychology at ASU, Durm has reached thousands of students, striving to help them learn what they don’t know.

“One of my favorite sayings, my students will tell you, is that ‘the less you know, you know, because the more you learn — and that’s when you grow wiser,’” Durm said during a June interview, chatting in the offices of The (Athens, Ala.) News Courier.

The chat was timely — Durm’s new book had just recently published — but the venue was fitting: “Growing Wiser, Knowing Less” is not a scholarly tome or flavor-of-the-day self-help title penned by a highly educated physiological psychologist.

Rather, call Durm an anecdotal author. “Growing Wiser” is a compilation of monthly columns, engagingly written for The News Courier through 16 years of publication, beginning in 2003, and on topics as varied as Father’s Day, tornadoes and dog poop.

More serious pieces are reflections about life, such as the columns from 2005 highlighting the journey Durm and his wife took in adopting twin girls from Ukraine.

But the even more serious columns are written to fill the author’s titled maxim: short essays with headlines such as “What color is God?”; “The history of abortion”; and “Race, color, creed, is there such a thing as equality?”

Columns such as those, Durm said, are designed through short story telling — his columns come in each at about 500 words — to do what he strove to achieve in the classroom: help people grow wiser through critical thinking.

“If you don’t read anything that goes against what you already believe, you’re not learning anything,” the author said. “Sometimes, I’d say something in class that (would elicit) the neck jerk. … I loved to see that because then I knew I had their attention and got them thinking.”

Yet, not every “neck jerk” was as successful in its outcome as Durm would have liked. Many of his more sober columns — similar to topics presented to his students that were backed with scientific or biblical research — indicated how much “unlearning” he had yet to do.

“When you show them (students) the data, you would think it would change their minds,” he said. “But, as one of the columns shows you, the research shows that not only do (some people) not change their mind, they contemplate what they already believe incorrectly — but even stronger.”

Breaking such bonds is challenging, Durm said, and that was a lesson he learned from personal experience.

Before earning his doctorate and a path toward a professorship — Durm has five college degrees — he had contemplated a different route: life as a Methodist minister.

“But, I got to the point that I realized that I wasn’t smart enough to speak for God,” Durm said. “I noticed that if you have five pastors and five churches in the same row, on Sunday morning they all say something different, yet they’re all coming from the same (source).”

Though veering from the ministry “hurt my mother,” Durm said that it was such self-honesty that allowed him to rise above his roots.

“In my family, I’m the first one on both sides who ever got a college degree,” he said. “My father had high school, my mother had to 10th grade. We didn’t have an indoor bathroom until I was in the sixth grade. We never had a lot of money, but we always had a tableful of food and my mom made sure we went to school clean.

“No, we never had a lot of money, but we had a lot of good things.”

And that an “old country boy from Tennessee” ended up teaching at ASU for 38 years meant a continuation of those good things, he said.

“I loved teaching in college,” Durm said.

Outside of college, the love for teaching persists. Durm is working on a second book he expects to publish later this year compiling his professional writings.

But as for what column he’d most like to share from “Growing Wiser,” the erudite professor never varies from his lesson plan.

“You choose,” he said.

The details

“Growing Wiser, Knowing Less,” is available from online book sellers or by contacting Durm at his Athens, Ala., office, where you might be able to obtain an autographed copy by calling 256-614-3099. Email markwdurm@gmail.com.