{"id":4110,"date":"1989-09-01T01:00:00","date_gmt":"1989-09-01T01:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rbc.com\/en\/about-us\/history\/letter\/vol-70-no-5-sept-oct-1989-the-importance-of-teaching\/"},"modified":"2022-11-27T02:30:17","modified_gmt":"2022-11-27T02:30:17","slug":"vol-70-no-5-sept-oct-1989-the-importance-of-teaching","status":"publish","type":"rbc_letter","link":"https:\/\/www.rbc.com\/en\/about-us\/history\/letter\/vol-70-no-5-sept-oct-1989-the-importance-of-teaching\/","title":{"rendered":"Vol 70, No. 5 &#8211; Sept.\/Oct. 1989 &#8211; The Importance of Teaching"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"layout-column-main\">\n<p class=\"boldtext\">We are all in favour of education,                     but we tend to take for granted the people who provide it.                     If our society cares about the future, it will resume giving                     teachers the support and credit they deserve&#8230;<\/p>\n<p> Teaching is one of those things, like editing a newspaper                     or managing a baseball team, that everybody thinks he or she                     can do better than the experts. Everybody has taught something                     to somebody at one time or another, after all. We begin our                     amateur teaching careers as children by imposing our superior                     knowledge on our younger siblings and playmates. As students,                     we pass judgment among our peers on this or that teacher&#8217;s                     capabilities. As adults, those of us who do not teach professionally                     stand ever ready to criticize those who do.<\/p>\n<p>An educator himself, Bergen Evans once struck back at people                     who presume that any fool could be a teacher. Commenting on                     George Bernard Shaw&#8217;s aphorism, &#8220;He who can does. He who cannot                     teaches,&#8221; Evans wrote: &#8220;The common inference from this much-quoted                     statement, that the teacher is a sort of failure in the world                     of action, greatly comforts anti-intellectuals. But almost                     to a man successful men of action (all of whom think they                     could be teachers if they turned aside to it) have proved                     failures as teachers.&#8221; He did not document his information,                     but it rings true.<\/p>\n<p>In any case, Shaw&#8217;s quip does not stand up to logic. Teachers                     <em> can <\/em> do something, and <em> do <\/em> do something; they                     teach. Like any other professional activity, teaching requires                     a cultivated ability. To be done exceptionally well, it also                     requires a special talent and a sense of vocation. There are                     &#8220;born teachers&#8221; just as there are &#8220;born statesmen&#8221; or &#8220;born                     musicians.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Practised diligently by men and women of talent, teaching                     is as much of an art as Shaw&#8217;s metier of play-writing. The                     trouble from the teacher&#8217;s point of view is that there are                     a lot more teachers than playwrights or men of action like                     generals or financiers. Education is one of our nation&#8217;s biggest                     industries. Because of the sheer number of those who teach                     in schools, colleges and universities, they have become part                     of the landscape. Like the familiar features of a landscape,                     they tend to be overlooked.<\/p>\n<p>Still, there are probably many more great teachers labouring                     among the crowd than there are great authors or actors basking                     in the spotlight. They could be found anywhere in the educational                     system from a graduate to a country school. Teaching, as measured                     by its results, does not lend itself to a division between                     the big and the bush leagues. Those results come in the form                     of the quality of the people it shapes.<\/p>\n<p>Unlike sports, politics, entertainment, the arts or the                     law, teaching does not give rise to &#8220;stars.&#8221; Nobody ever got                     a Nobel Prize for teaching achievements. True, many academics                     have come in for high honours, but always for something other                     than their work in the classroom &#8211; a book, an economic treatise,                     a ground-breaking scientific experiment.<\/p>\n<p>School teachers, as opposed to university professors, are                     particularly under-recognized. Who is to say that a woman                     conducting a kindergarten class may not be contributing as                     much to society than the most degree-laden university president?                     Given the evidence that our very first brush with education                     leaves a permanent stamp on our characters, that teacher could                     be molding a future Abraham Lincoln or a Madame Curie. More                     likely, though, she is molding a whole class of the type of                     responsible citizens upon whom the wellbeing of our society                     depends.<\/p>\n<p>Teaching is a creative act, never more so than in primary                     and secondary schools. Good teachers, like good artists, have                     their own individual styles of performing. They also respect                     the individuality of their students in the realization that                     everybody learns through his or her own perceptions. The story                     is told of a legendary teacher who was asked at the start                     of the term what his course matter would be. &#8220;I don&#8217;t know,&#8221;                     he said. &#8220;I haven&#8217;t seen my students yet.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>It would be a wonderful world if every teacher deeply understood                     each and every child and put that understanding into effect,                     but that would be asking too much of human nature. Teachers                     can become tired and impatient, and give up on troublesome                     or backward children . They have their personal prejudices,                     and it is sometimes a struggle with their own personalities                     to give every pupil the attention he or she requires.<\/p>\n<p>The world would be equally wonderful if every youngster                     came to school to learn. There is an element of truth, however,                     to the old teachers&#8217; room joke that for every one who wants                     to teach, there are 20 not wanting to be taught. The teacher                     has the peculiar dual task of inculcating knowledge while                     at the same time breaking down resistance to its inculcation.                     It is part of the challenge of teaching to bring promising                     students around to the point where they are willing and even                     eager to learn.<\/p>\n<h3>&#8216;The mediocre teacher tells &#8230; The                   great                   teacher inspires&#8217;<\/h3>\n<p>Because instruction is an interpersonal affair, different                     teaching styles work on different students. An abrasive performer                     might drive his more timid students into their shells. But                     then there was Rudyard Kipling, who, In his autobiography                     <em> Something of Myself<\/em> , recalled his English and classics                     master. &#8220;He had a violent temper , no disadvantage in handling                     boys used to direct speech, and a gift of schoolmaster&#8217;s sarcasm                     which must have been a relief to him and was certainly a treasure                     trove to me &#8230; Under him I came to feel that words could                     be used as weapons, for he did me the honour to talk to me                     plentifully &#8230; One learns more from a good scholar in a rage                     than from a score of lucid and laborious drudges.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Kipling&#8217;s phrase, &#8220;a good scholar in a rage,&#8221; should remind                     us of the point, often forgotten by those who belittle teachers,                     that the best of them have a broad and deep range of knowledge.                     First-class teachers seek to ignite in their students an enthusiasm                     for their subjects by example and leadership. They are more                     than instructors; they are role models for students. &#8220;The                     mediocre teacher tells. The good teacher explains. The superior                     teacher demonstrates. The great teacher inspires,&#8221; William                     Arthur Ward wrote.<\/p>\n<p>Just what makes a first-class teacher has always been a                     matter of debate between educational liberals and conservatives.                     Even the traditional method of teaching by terror &#8211; spare                     not the rod and spoil not the child &#8211; has its supporters among                     parents who feel that permissiveness in the schools has gone                     too far. On the other hand, there seems to be general agreement                     that the traditional technique of making students learn by                     rote produces not rounded human beings but programmed automatons.                     An anonymous principal once warned his staff: &#8220;Don&#8217;t think                     that the mind is a warehouse, and that you are here to stuff                     it full of goods.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>On the other hand, a certain amount of didactic learning                     is necessary to show the student the way. &#8220;Some flabby persons                     try to make education painless,&#8221; one-time teacher W. E. McNeill                     wrote. &#8220;Do not,&#8217; they say, &#8216;ask students to learn facts, but                     teach them to think.&#8217; O thinking &#8211; what intellectual crimes                     are committed in thy name! How can a man think if he doesn&#8217;t                     know?&#8221;<\/p>\n<h3>Instilling a zest for learning is instilling                   a zest for life<\/h3>\n<p>At the same time no one would dispute that the aim of education                     should be to produce individuals able to think for themselves                     and not merely follow what someone else has told them. And                     the way for teachers to accomplish this is to concentrate                     on what M.F. Ashley Montagu called &#8220;the drawing out, not the                     pumping in.&#8221; Teaching should excite a youngster&#8217;s natural                     curiosity. Instead of giving pat answers, it should raise                     questions. It was a wise mother who asked her young son after                     school not &#8220;what did you learn today?&#8221; but &#8220;what questions                     did you ask today?&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>It has been said a thousand times in different ways that                     education should not stop at school; that the proper role                     of the school is to prepare the mind for life-long learning.                     The theory is that you do not get an education in a classroom;                     you learn <em> how <\/em> to get an education, which in the long                     run you can only acquire by yourself. In fact, the word &#8220;educate&#8221;                     comes from the Latin <em> educere<\/em> , which means &#8220;leading                     out&#8221; the student into a wider world of knowledge. It is by                     stimulating a zest for learning in general that teachers can                     perform their greatest service to those in their care, for                     a zest for learning is a zest for life. And a zest for life                     is what allows people to live contentedly for all of their                     days.<\/p>\n<p>As in writing, teaching is at its most efficacious when                     it shows instead of tells. The best teachers make their points                     by way of illustration. Better still, they demonstrate wherever                     possible. Any teacher would do well to keep in mind the Chinese                     saying: &#8220;I hear and I forget. I see and I remember. I do and                     I understand.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;The method of teaching which approaches most nearly to                     the method of investigation is incomparably the best; since,                     not content with serving up a few barren and lifeless truths,                     it leads to the stock from which they grew,&#8221; wrote Edmund                     Burke, who possessed one of the best-conditioned minds in                     history. By investigating ideas, the teacher becomes a participant                     in the act of learning. &#8220;To be a teacher in the right sense                     is to be a learner,&#8221; Kierkegaard wrote.<\/p>\n<p>Given what is now known about the psychology of learning,                     everyone ideally would be taught in a small group with the                     teacher acting as a participant, leading the students in the                     pursuit of ideas and motivating them to think about life in                     all its aspects. Instruction would be tailored to the learner&#8217;s                     personality, and tightly focussed on individual weaknesses                     and strengths.<\/p>\n<h3>The teacher is expected to serve as                                       a surrogate parent<\/h3>\n<p>In a world that is far from ideal, that is not the reality.                     &#8220;In education, we have long given lip service to the fact                     that all human beings are different,&#8221; said Earl C. Kelley,                     professor of education at Wayne University. &#8220;But we have proceeded                     as if this were not so.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>The exigencies of economics lead to uniformity. Even in                     prosperous jurisdictions, education is strapped for funds.                     At its worst, inadequate funding makes for over-crowded classrooms,                     and education becomes a kind of mass production process, complete                     with a fair percentage of rejects. Teachers being human, there                     is always a temptation to treat students as so much raw material                     to be fed through a diploma-producing factory. The temptation                     is compounded by the fact that the educational system can                     be satisfied by filling &#8220;production norms.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>This helps to explain why, for instance, it is possible                     for some young people to graduate from high school unable                     to read and write adequately. When such things happen, the                     cry goes up: &#8220;Where were their teachers, for heaven&#8217;s sake?&#8221;                     But to blame teachers for the failings of modern public education                     is a classic case of shooting the messenger. Teachers did                     not invent the system, nor do they run it. It is the product                     of politics, and it is administered by educational bureaucrats                     whom teachers often regard as their sworn enemies.<\/p>\n<p>If the public, through its elected and appointed delegates,                     opts for a levelling process in which no student is allowed                     to fail, or curricula so soft that youths can loaf through                     their school days, it is not the fault of the teaching profession.                     If parents are careless enough or dumb enough not to notice                     that big Johnny can&#8217;t read, they are hardly entitled to protest.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;If a doctor, lawyer or dentist had 40 people in his office                     at one time, all of whom had different needs, and some of                     whom didn&#8217;t want to be there and were causing trouble, and                     the doctor, lawyer or dentist, without assistance, had to                     treat them all with professional excellence for nine months,                     then he might have some conception of a classroom teacher&#8217;s                     job,&#8221; wrote Donald D. Quinn, himself an experienced teacher.                     Faced with this daunting situation, some teachers tire of                     catering to individual needs and striving for professional                     excellence.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;A teacher is like a candle which lights others in consuming                     itself ,&#8221; wrote Giovani Ruffini in an early description of                     teacher burn-out . In inner city schools such as the one referred                     to in Tom Wolfe&#8217;s <em> The Bonfire of the Vanities<\/em> , where student behaviour ranges                     from &#8220;co-operative to life-threatening,&#8221; burn-out must be                     a terrible professional hazard.<\/p>\n<p>You do not have to look as far as the slums of New York                     to see where social trends have added to the already-heavy                     burden borne by teachers. Broken homes, teen-age promiscuity                     and drug and alcohol abuse are common in nice middle-class                     neighbourhoods too. Parents are often too apathetic or busy                     to meet their parental responsibilities. Problems of youth                     that were once dealt with at home have been dumped into the                     schools.<\/p>\n<p>In a materialistic society, young people have their attitudes                     shaped by a commercial pre-packaged youth culture which encourages                     precocity and contrariety towards authority. Materialism also                     permeates parental attitudes. In his recent admirable book                     <em> The Closing of the American Mind<\/em> , Allan Bloom wrote:                     &#8220;Fathers and mothers have lost the idea that the highest aspiration                     they might have for their children is for them to be wise                     &#8211; as priests, prophets and philosophers are wise. Specialized                     competence and success are all they can imagine.&#8221; In this                     spiritual vacuum, it is often left to teachers to instil whatever                     higher values a youth might have.<\/p>\n<p>Society has always expected an awful lot from its teachers,                     and now we are expecting even more from them. We expect them                     to serve to a large degree as surrogate parents, dealing with                     the emotional tangles and torments of the adolescent years.                     Teaching is one of those rare jobs in which one&#8217;s work is                     wrapped up in one&#8217;s personality. It is very demanding psychologically.                     The abdication of responsibility within so many homes has                     added to the psychological drain.<\/p>\n<p>Yet at the same time as the complications and vexations                     of teaching life multiply, the public persists in under-valuing                     the teacher. Every thinking person would agree that the hope                     of the human race lies chiefly in education, but most of us                     pay little attention to the people who provide this precious                     service, nor do we give them much support in the vital job                     they do.<\/p>\n<p>Fidel Castro had his priorities straight when he declared:                     &#8220;We need teachers &#8211; a heroine in every classroom.&#8221; Teaching                     is not usually associated with heroics, even though it takes                     actual physical courage to face up to the lurking threat of                     violence in some North American high schools today. The only                     teacher-hero in recent popular literature who readily comes                     to mind appears in Thomas Flanagan&#8217;s novel <em> The Year of                     the French<\/em> , in which the protagonist risks imprisonment                     to instruct poor Irish children in illicit schools proscribed                     by the English in the interests of keeping the Irish in subjugation.                     He and his enemies appreciated just how important education                     can be when freedom is at stake.<\/p>\n<h3>A tradition that has been lost and                   should be found<\/h3>\n<p>More commonly, however, the heroism is not so dramatic.                     &#8220;If I had a child who wanted to be a teacher, I would bid                     him Godspeed as if he were going to war,&#8221; wrote James Hilton,                     author of the great novel of teaching, <em> Goodbye Mr. Chips.                     <\/em> &#8220;For indeed the war against prejudice, greed and ignorance                     is eternal, and those who dedicate themselves to it give their                     lives no less because they may live to see some fraction of                     the battle won.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Not every teacher is a hero or heroine, of course. There                     are good, bad and indifferent ones, ranging from those who                     totally devote their lives to their students to those who                     totally devote their lives to themselves. Our social priorities                     do not make it easy to encourage the best and the brightest                     to teach. Surveys of students who consistently get top marks                     in university show that they intend to go into more prestigious                     and more lucrative professions. To a large extent, teachers                     themselves tend to be diffident about their occupation. &#8220;I                     beg of you,&#8221; said William G. Carr to a representative teacher,                     &#8220;to stop apologizing for being a member of the most important                     &#8230; profession in the world.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Teaching is not a lost art, but the regard for it is a                     lost tradition,&#8221; Jacques Barzun wrote. If this society knows                     what is good for it, that regard will be restored. Parents                     and other concerned citizens will do all they can to make                     a teacher&#8217;s life less troublesome and give due credit to the                     profession. To a large extent, teachers are in charge of the                     future. The fate of people in the future depends on how well                     they are taught today.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":79,"featured_media":0,"template":"","categories":[1],"rbc_letter_theme":[],"rbc_letter_year":[76],"class_list":["post-4110","rbc_letter","type-rbc_letter","status-publish","hentry","category-uncategorized","rbc_letter_year-76"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin v27.2 (Yoast SEO v27.2) - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-premium-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Vol 70, No. 5 - Sept.\/Oct. 1989 - The Importance of Teaching - RBC<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.rbc.com\/en\/about-us\/history\/letter\/vol-70-no-5-sept-oct-1989-the-importance-of-teaching\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Vol 70, No. 5 - Sept.\/Oct. 1989 - The Importance of Teaching - RBC\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"We are all in favour of education, but we tend to take for granted the people who provide it. If our society cares about the future, it will resume giving teachers the support and credit they deserve&#8230; Teaching is one of those things, like editing a newspaper or managing a baseball team, that everybody thinks [&hellip;]\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.rbc.com\/en\/about-us\/history\/letter\/vol-70-no-5-sept-oct-1989-the-importance-of-teaching\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"RBC\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2022-11-27T02:30:17+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"13 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.rbc.com\/en\/about-us\/history\/letter\/vol-70-no-5-sept-oct-1989-the-importance-of-teaching\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.rbc.com\/en\/about-us\/history\/letter\/vol-70-no-5-sept-oct-1989-the-importance-of-teaching\/\",\"name\":\"Vol 70, No. 5 - Sept.\/Oct. 1989 - The Importance of Teaching - RBC\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.rbc.com\/en\/#website\"},\"datePublished\":\"1989-09-01T01:00:00+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2022-11-27T02:30:17+00:00\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"ReadAction\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/www.rbc.com\/en\/about-us\/history\/letter\/vol-70-no-5-sept-oct-1989-the-importance-of-teaching\/\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"WebSite\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.rbc.com\/en\/#website\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.rbc.com\/en\/\",\"name\":\"RBC\",\"description\":\"\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"SearchAction\",\"target\":{\"@type\":\"EntryPoint\",\"urlTemplate\":\"https:\/\/www.rbc.com\/en\/?s={search_term_string}\"},\"query-input\":{\"@type\":\"PropertyValueSpecification\",\"valueRequired\":true,\"valueName\":\"search_term_string\"}}],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\"}]}<\/script>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO Premium plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Vol 70, No. 5 - Sept.\/Oct. 1989 - The Importance of Teaching - RBC","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.rbc.com\/en\/about-us\/history\/letter\/vol-70-no-5-sept-oct-1989-the-importance-of-teaching\/","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Vol 70, No. 5 - Sept.\/Oct. 1989 - The Importance of Teaching - RBC","og_description":"We are all in favour of education, but we tend to take for granted the people who provide it. If our society cares about the future, it will resume giving teachers the support and credit they deserve&#8230; Teaching is one of those things, like editing a newspaper or managing a baseball team, that everybody thinks [&hellip;]","og_url":"https:\/\/www.rbc.com\/en\/about-us\/history\/letter\/vol-70-no-5-sept-oct-1989-the-importance-of-teaching\/","og_site_name":"RBC","article_modified_time":"2022-11-27T02:30:17+00:00","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","twitter_misc":{"Est. reading time":"13 minutes"},"schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.rbc.com\/en\/about-us\/history\/letter\/vol-70-no-5-sept-oct-1989-the-importance-of-teaching\/","url":"https:\/\/www.rbc.com\/en\/about-us\/history\/letter\/vol-70-no-5-sept-oct-1989-the-importance-of-teaching\/","name":"Vol 70, No. 5 - Sept.\/Oct. 1989 - The Importance of Teaching - RBC","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.rbc.com\/en\/#website"},"datePublished":"1989-09-01T01:00:00+00:00","dateModified":"2022-11-27T02:30:17+00:00","inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.rbc.com\/en\/about-us\/history\/letter\/vol-70-no-5-sept-oct-1989-the-importance-of-teaching\/"]}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.rbc.com\/en\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.rbc.com\/en\/","name":"RBC","description":"","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.rbc.com\/en\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"}]}},"parsely":{"version":"1.1.0","canonical_url":"https:\/\/rbc.com\/en\/about-us\/history\/letter\/vol-70-no-5-sept-oct-1989-the-importance-of-teaching\/","smart_links":{"inbound":0,"outbound":0},"traffic_boost_suggestions_count":0,"meta":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","headline":"Vol 70, No. 5 &#8211; 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