Of Teachers and Learning

Having been a secondary school teacher all my professional life I share with you a secret that all upper-grade teachers (and good students) know. More often than not, a teacher is simply a shortcut or a resource that exists to help the lazy, or busy, or less motivated person gain some knowledge or skill that this person wouldn’t pay the price to find out himself.

That, of course, isn’t all bad. It is not necessary, and certainly not efficient, for every person to reinvent the wheel, or light bulb, or musical score, or golf swing, or to read every book or go to original sources in the basements of libraries to use these things to our advantage ourselves. We can turn to a specialist—to one who knows and get what we need and move on from there.

But there is a danger. If all one does is tap into the shortcut, the condensed version, the CliffsNotes, the teacher’s mind; if he or she always uses spell-check instead of the dictionary, the telephone instead of the handwritten letter, Wikipedia instead of real research, something is going to atrophy. If you want to really learn something, you’ve got to get involved with it yourself. Immersion is the key. Pay the price.