Castles made of sand…

This came from “Occasional Thoughts“. I’m going to quote it all since their is not a permanent link to it and its buried in the middle of the page.

Some thoughts on the role of teaching and the teacher.

In good teaching, the teacher puts the student in distress. That is, the teacher deliberately, consciously, and (hopefully) skillfully asks the student to do things that are outside the student’’s comfort zone and may be outside their present abilities. Students do not like this; none of us like being placed in a situation where our embarassment [sic] and inability may be shown so clearly.

There are two ways to relieve the student of their distress. The first (all-too-common) way is to structure the training so that situations like this seldom if ever arise. We see this in the highly scripted training materials (and instructors!) where the student is led from one exercise to another to another. This can work, because if you just follow the printed/oral instructions, you won’t risk failure. Two and a half days of this mind-numbing stuff and you can get a certificate to hang on your wall.

The other way to relieve the student of their distress is to expand their present abilities/mindset, so that what looked hard or impossible now seems natural and pleasant. In fact, it’s more than pleasant: students who get this kind of relief feel tremendously empowered and they get excited. Clearly, this is the better path, so why don”t we see more of it?

First, it requires the teacher to put him/herself in distress. If my job as teacher is to read slides, hand out materials, and answer occasional questions, my task is pretty easy[1]. That is, there’s little occasion for distress. But the other route — that’s far more dangerous. I’m going to be intentionally placing myself in a situation where, if you don’t “come through” the experience, you won’t think much of me. You may get mad. You may call my boss and complain. It’s no wonder that this is the path less travelled.

So, if one method of teaching involves distress for both student and teacher and the other way minimizes or eliminates stress, why should we choose the riskier path? In my experience of teaching, students would dearly love for me to provide answers to all the questions I ask them — before they even try to answer themselves! Then, they will dutifully write it down. So what’s wrong with this?

The good teacher knows that they have a very small amount of time with the student and that when the student returns to the “real world”, he must be able to arrive at the answers for himself. The role of the teacher is to help facilitate a transformation so that the student acquires deep knowledge. Shallow knowledge is easy and we see far too much of it. In shallow knowledge, the student learns magic incantations. They write these words, push this button, and the desired result happens. The rote behavior masks a lack of deep knowledge.

But shallow knowledge will not ultimately be helpful. The good teacher knows this and she resists both her and her student’s inclination to avoid feelings of distress. She wants her students to gain insights so that they can solve their own problems and so she pulls, prods, encourages, remands–in short, she does whatever she can to help her students arrive at that “Aha!” moment where the knowledge — the deep knowledge — that seemed so utterly impossible to attain belongs to the student forever.

[1] There’s a joke associated with this remark. It seems that a university Physics professor made a great breakthrough and had agreed to do a series of talks at universities throughout the country detailing his discoveries. Because the professor disliked airplanes, he hired a chaffeur to drive him from one spot to the next. Spending so much time together, the professor and the chaffeur became friendly and in the course of time, the chaffeur confided that he thought the professor had about the easiest job in the world.

“How’s that?” asked the professor.

“Well,” said the driver. “You give the same talk night after night. You get asked the same questions night after night. There’s just nothing to it. Really, I’ve heard it so many times now, even I could do it.”

At this, the professor challenged the chaffeur and at their next stop, the chaffeur and the professor changed roles (and clothes). Good as his word, the chaffeur gave a very successful talk and, just as he had predicted, the same questions were asked. That is, until one person asked a new question, one the chaffeur-cum-professor didn’t know. He thought about it for a while and finally said, “Young man, that is the single most stupid question I have EVER been asked. Why, I’m surprised that you don’t know the answer to it. I would think anyone would. In fact, the question is so simple, I’m going to have my chaffeur answer it!”