While in the library puzzling over some geodesic vector fields, I happened upon the text of a speech Oppenheimer made at Cornell in 1949 concerning teaching and research at liberal universities. He makes a deep observation which I shorten and paraphrase below, using his own words. The complete text can be found in the chapter "Science in Being" of "Oppenheimer, Metropolis, Rota, and Sharp. Uncommon sense. Boston: Birkhaeuser, 1984."
The professor who stands helpless before the unknown is much closer to the student than the teacher who knows all the answers. The experience of the student and of the researcher is to be puzzled. The ability to be humbled by a tough problem is one of the reasons why the most inspiring teachers are those who devote a good deal of time to their own researches. Respect for what other people have done before, and respect for ignorance, make them far more sympathetic as teachers than the professional pedagogues.
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i would say:
the professor who stands helpless before the unknown is much closer to good students than the teacher who knows all the answers. only good students can understand a humble teacher facing a tough problem. bad students will see instead an unprepared teacher, and they will treat him just the way bad teachers treat them.
I have learnt this watching a french film about a very good teacher facing a tough classroom, whose students usually face bad teachers.
regards
sgold
Should we expect doctors to infect themselves with viruses so they feel their patients' pains? It would be a sad world if the only way to feel empathy for someone were through living the same experiences (and all teachers were once students, that they seem to forget that says more about the system of incentives going on on schools than anything else). Respect for ignorance is certainly a skill that can be learned.
Actually, I've seen it work the other way around than suggested. I once had a teacher who was a very accomplished researcher. Things were so easy for him that he couldn't accept the students failing to understand simple concepts and would get angry (well, at least that was a common explanation for his public displays of irritation). That the most inspiring teachers are also researchers is a hypothesis that should be put to test, it could as well be that some individuals excel at both because they are committed to their work, whatever that is, rather than a causal relation researcher -> good teacher. Mind you, I'm not against researchers who also teach, but there is a mentality in Brazil that doing research is necessary for higher education institutions. Coupled with the scarcity of autonomous research institutions, it results in the worst of both worlds: otherwise good teachers that play doing research and otherwise good researchers that give lousy classes.
You may all be right, still it is a beautiful thought by Oppenheimer.
The correlation is not complete and indeed people are good at what they do when they take whatever they do seriously. But the record of the non-teaching research institutions is questionable, and in the majority of cases when I heard "fulano is a bad teacher but he is very knowledgeable," it turned out to be a false alarm.
my bottom lines are:
a. oppenheimer had only good students.
b. the french teacher, the excellent one, was fired.
c. the most effective way of learning something is to teach it.
d. if you like teaching, be aware of bad teachers, they will conspire against you. every single day.
sgold
more bottom lines:
e. bad teachers will conspire against you, even if they don't intend to do it, untill the day you don't like teaching anymore.
f. when that day arrives, you have two options: either you continue teaching and become also a bad teacher, or you start a new life.
obviously you know my choice.
i hope my english is ok.
hugs
sgold
Mediocrity always fights against dedication and competence, let alone genius. That's when persistence is necessary.
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