Thoughts about teaching

Things you should prob­a­bly find out by your­self, rather than read in a blog, if you aspire to be a teacher:

• All that you work on with your stu­dents is gone after two years – all of your files lost, all the paper recy­cled. The frac­tion of a per­cent that may remain in the stu­dents’ minds after that time, how­ev­er, is entire­ly in your hands.
• There is no con­sen­sus on the pur­pose of edu­ca­tion. Ulti­mate­ly how­ev­er, whether your focus is on intel­lec­tu­al stim­u­la­tion, pro­fes­sion­al skills, or acqui­si­tion of infor­ma­tion, your work goes towards defin­ing the stu­dents’ role in soci­ety, and you act as a filter.
• We are no more equal in intel­lec­tu­al terms than we are in phys­i­cal terms. Beyond the student’s back­ground and moti­va­tion, a great and cru­el share of his/her suc­cess is defined by sheer intel­lec­tu­al brainpower.
• The nature of teach­ing is peer pres­sure. The real val­ue added by the teacher is the process that keeps the stu­dent focused. There is noth­ing you bring that your stu­dents couldn’t learn by them­selves. “Teacher” is just a pompous word for “coach”.
• Grades are mean­ing­less and use­ful. They are mean­ing­less for very appar­ent rea­sons. They are use­ful in that they serve as a met­ric for the student’s time bud­get­ing. If that is not tor­ment­ing, you like­ly are get­ting one of those char­ac­ter­is­tics wrong.
• The bal­ance of pow­er between stu­dents and teacher is over­whelm­ing­ly and unhealth­ily tipped towards the teacher. Signs that you are doing a good job are sub­tle; the dif­fer­ence made is impor­tant but it makes for weak sig­nals in class. Low­er your stan­dards and most­ly noth­ing will happen.
• Intel­lec­tu­al stim­u­la­tion is addic­tive. Intel­lec­tu­al inter­course is irrepara­bly addictive.
• Black­board chalk gets into everything.