Re: Wakeman Or Emerson?

Terrell Miller <millerto@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> Jeff Blanks wrote:

> > So teaching isn't an honorable profession? Is teaching just some sort
> > of jobs program for the incompetent? How could you teach if you were
> > incompetent?

> read the chapter the night before you teach it, go straight by the book,
> doubletalk your way through any challenging questions, intimidate the
> hell out of the students so they are afraid to ask questions, and then
> nitpick mercilessly on the tests. Lobby like hell to advance the notion
> that assigning bad grades to the duller students damages their "self
> esteem", and structure your class away from fact-based teaching.

> And make sure your NEA dues are paid in full.

> > Are there no "virtuoso teachers", so to speak? Someone
> > had to teach Emerson, no?

> *good* teachers are rare. I can think of maybe a half-dozen in my
> educational career, and exactly two good music teachers. And without
> hesitation I can easily think of twice that many *bad* teachers.

> I've always thought that the best teachers are the ones who struggled to
> master their subject. That way they can better empathize with their
> students' stumbling blocks. Somebody who breezed through a subject when
> they were learning it usually cannot understand that the material isn't
> obvious to other people, and they take so many shortcuts for granted
> that they have to make a constant effort to throttle back, otherwise
> they're way too far in front of their students, talking over their heads
> and/or down to them.

> That's another reason why the best teachers are usually in K-12 instead
> of in college. Somebody teaching tenth-grade biology is doing it because
> she wants to help young kids understand science. (Granted she may be
> there because there was not exactly a hot job market for biology majors,
> but work with me here). But a college professor is there mostly because
> she got her Ph.D in genetics and she wants to keep doing cutting-edge
> research, none of which her students would remotely comprehend in the
> first place. Teaching classes is usually a dreaded chore, not the
> primary focus.

You have this *thing* about academia, Terrell, have you ever noticed?

There are colleges -- lots of them -- that don't really support much
research, much less cutting-edge laboratory stuff. What are those
college professors there for?


--

-S
"You know what love really is? It's like you've swallowed a great big
secret. A warm wonderful secret that nobody else knows about." - 'Blame it
on Rio'
.

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