Monday, November 14, 2005
A declaration
It is my job as a teacher to teach, and the duty of the student to study.
Or: It is my job as a teacher to teach the specification, and the duty of the student to study what is in that specification.
Just because the requirements of the post, however, are set for me, I struggle to realise, does not mean the methods are set. I have accepted the dominant practice, one of survival, of getting the student to make notes and learn and study independently, and for me to mostly fuss about them and prod and poke them and set questions and exams to demand from them.
But what if I meet them somewhere, in a middleground between their working hardest and my working hardest, so we can be truly beneficial to one another? I want them to succeed, often even more than they do. They want me to teach them, much more than I want to or can teach them. So, where is this point?
I declare that I must teach with an unbending passion. Not with unswerving dedication to the examining board's decision, for I may not agree with them. And not with apology, for the students must not lost heart. But with a passion. I must start from and end with a consideration and assessment of the student's understanding, and nothing else.
The student must be privileged, and their knowledge nurtured. They must be asked to inquire for more, to question themselves, and to find out more. They must both be confident and bashful at once, in order that they may work harder to prove the former and calm the latter.
In a sense, we must strip away considerations of the exam and the social expediencies of learning and get back to the root - simply to learn for its own sake. Who is not interested in learning about the person? Who is not interested in finding out more about why we are what we are? So I will pose these questions, I will expose my students with answers, we will understand and assimilate these answers, and we wil have learned. When we come to examining this knowledge, they will care personally about what is going on, not instrumentally, not merely for the benefit of the grade.
Or: It is my job as a teacher to teach the specification, and the duty of the student to study what is in that specification.
Just because the requirements of the post, however, are set for me, I struggle to realise, does not mean the methods are set. I have accepted the dominant practice, one of survival, of getting the student to make notes and learn and study independently, and for me to mostly fuss about them and prod and poke them and set questions and exams to demand from them.
But what if I meet them somewhere, in a middleground between their working hardest and my working hardest, so we can be truly beneficial to one another? I want them to succeed, often even more than they do. They want me to teach them, much more than I want to or can teach them. So, where is this point?
I declare that I must teach with an unbending passion. Not with unswerving dedication to the examining board's decision, for I may not agree with them. And not with apology, for the students must not lost heart. But with a passion. I must start from and end with a consideration and assessment of the student's understanding, and nothing else.
The student must be privileged, and their knowledge nurtured. They must be asked to inquire for more, to question themselves, and to find out more. They must both be confident and bashful at once, in order that they may work harder to prove the former and calm the latter.
In a sense, we must strip away considerations of the exam and the social expediencies of learning and get back to the root - simply to learn for its own sake. Who is not interested in learning about the person? Who is not interested in finding out more about why we are what we are? So I will pose these questions, I will expose my students with answers, we will understand and assimilate these answers, and we wil have learned. When we come to examining this knowledge, they will care personally about what is going on, not instrumentally, not merely for the benefit of the grade.
