Mark Wonsil presented a very comprehensive article about the failings of
educators. As a teacher, the child of teachers and the parent of teachers I
can tell you horror stories about teachers that will make you take your
babies, rap them up in cotton wadding and hide them away until they are
twenty-six. It still misses the point.

If being trained to do a job is no guarantee that you will do it right where
does that leave the untrained? There was an ad campaign for nursing schools
that used the hook, "If caring were all it took ..." That is the point.

Do we train teachers properly? No, with a capital N! Does that mean we
shouldn't train them? NO, with a capital N and O. Will we change our
methods? Not until we change our emphasis from producing cookie-cutter
cubicle-dwelling know nothing care less up my bottom line dweebs to
producing self actuated fully functioning human beings.

I also do not believe that the score of a SAT will indicate the person's
ability to teach. Though Einstein was supposed to have said that a scientist
that can explain his science to a child is a charlatan, I don't know that
Einstein would be my first choice for a high school physics teacher. I once
went to attend classes from a recognized genius and master of the field of
study. I had read everything he wrote and was looking forward to gleaning
the bounty from his intellectual table. Unfortunately, he was one of the
poorest lecturers that I ever heard.

Teaching is a skill. Like any skill, it is a series of techniques, which can
be learned. Practice makes, if not perfect at least proficient. Knowing the
subject matter is a given, there is no technique to teach what you don't
know.

Teaching is an art. Like any art, it takes inspiration. It goes beyond just
knowing the techniques. Van Gogh loaded up his canvas with paint, Louis
Armstrong fingered his valves incorrectly and Dylan Thomas used a thesaurus
to write poetry. None of these techniques are taught in the textbooks but
can we deny that they were inspired artists.

Teachers need to be artists. Teaching, according to Piaget, is facilitating
the innate desire to learn. Teaching is not about imparting facts it is
about teaching how to find the facts and what to do with them once we find
them. The teacher/artist helps the student see the world anew each time they
look. The teacher/artist is first and foremost his own primary student.

No metric yet known to man can quantify inspiration.

Work for Peace

The opinions expressed herein are my own and not necessarily those of my
employer.
Yosef Rosenblatt


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