One of the ideas I like a lot about learning is a Sanskrit poem which says that one learns a quarter from the teacher, a quarter from the peers, another quarter from self-study and the final quarter by teaching. Thus, without teaching, one’s learning is not supposed to be complete. And, I think it is also a good attitude towards teaching that is beneficial to both the teacher and the taught.
That is the reason why I liked this post of PZ, wherein he says:
In my classroom, I’m an authority only by accident of birth — I’ve got a thirty year head start on my students. However, my whole goal is to get these students to start questioning and challenging me, and finding out new stuff that I didn’t know before. I even like it when the creationists in class start raising objections. If Drugmonkey thinks a college classroom is a place where the best teaching is done by imposing his views on a roomful of students, he’s not going to make it to that exalted position of The Teaching College Professor, because he won’t be teaching.
Tags: classroom teaching
