Don’t believe teachers

While reading David Hume’s well-known passages (it was an accident, okay?), one thought came back to my mind. It might be dangerous for students not to think of these issues, so I’d like to raise this topic.

As a part of our PhD program we have pedagogy classes, and (excuse me) they suck. There were two things that struck me most: 1) the lecturer, when advising on techniques teachers must use, does not follow his recommendations – that seems very odd; 2) at times these recommendations are opposite to what real learning is based on. That’s a bit disturbing, isn’t it?

Let me give an example. One of the qualities of a great teacher, according to our lecturer, is an ability to persuade people. So teacher should use it in order to prove some of the ideas he wants students to understand.

At first, that looks fine. But let me give you an opinion of another person. He believes that being persuasive is the opposite of what great teacher must be. Instead, one encourages students to learn things and do so not by pouring answers deep into their heads, but by inquiring them, making them ponder. As someone, apparentely incredibly intelligent, said, “It doesn’t matter what we cover in the classroom; what matters is what we discover”.

So what I want students in particular to understand is that when it comes to learning, you can’t trust anyone: parents, teachers, authorities or even greatest leaders. What you should be doing instead is to form your belief system, support your ideas by scientifically proven facts and other reliable evidence. Otherwise you risk to become dependent on anyone who would like you to be his or her slave.

P.S. That opposing person was Noam Chomsky