A few days back, when I suggested on social media that parents are perfectly capable of teaching their own children, I didn’t realize how controversial my opinion was. I was bombarded with replies telling me I was clueless, that the American public as a whole lacks intelligence, and that I should leave teaching to the experts. The thing is, speaking as an educator with two degrees of my own – and the mountain of student debt to prove it – I stand by my above statement. Anyone can teach.
Okay, so maybe not everyone can teach 30 children at once. A person must be gifted with patience for that situation – patience, not teaching. My point remains, everyone has the ability to teach at least one person – themselves. That’s right; you have the ability to teach yourself, and the fact that we as a society have forgotten this is deeply distressing to me.
When I was young I used to watch a lot of shows with my parents, and one of our favorites was called The Pretender. The premise was, to desperately oversimplify it, there was a genius who would teach himself different professions and blend in to basically solve crimes. Once
I told my mom that I wish I could do that, be smart enough to teach myself all kinds of skills. Mom told me that I already had that ability. She said once you know how to read, there is no limit to what you can teach yourself. That instilled in me not only a deep love for reading, but also a love for learning because I knew I didn’t need to wait for someone to teach me. I could teach myself.
As an educator I’ve taken so many different courses on curriculum and teaching theory. I’ve learned so much jargon and methodologies, all basically trying to help me instill in my students intrinsic motivation. Why do they need intrinsic motivation? Because no matter how many years I spend in school learning how to teach, I will always be incapable of inserting knowledge into my students’ heads. That’s right, it took ten years of going to universities to learn that the only people who can make my students learn, are my students.
What do you think a classroom is? It doesn’t defy the space time continuum. Taking a class is asking someone else to create a situation where you are forced to teach yourself. Most, dare I say all, of your learning takes place when you engage with the source material. All that homework and assigned reading is there to force you to look at the source material and put it in your head. Writing assignments are designed to force you to think about what you read, and to think about it hard enough so that you can not only paraphrase it but ask questions and expand upon it. No one is putting that new information in your head but you. School is literally trying to force you to teach yourself. Intrinsic motivation; that is what all my education classes stressed and wanted me to create within my students. If you want to learn, you will learn, with or without a classroom.
I am deeply saddened that this isn’t common knowledge. That there are so many people out there who believe you need to be an expert to teach. That as a parent I don’t have the ability to pick up the kindergarten curriculum and teach myself how to help my child engage in learning. I know for a fact I lack the patience to teach a room of 30 children – which is why I teach adults – but I also know I am perfectly capable of teaching a classroom of one, my son. If I lack knowledge in a given subject, I also know that I can find materials to teach myself. I’m not saying that teaching is easy. Learning something new is always going to be a challenge. I am saying that teaching is not brain surgery or rocket science or particle physics.
Yes, expertise has its place, but it doesn’t quite deserve the pedestal we’ve placed it on. Experts can be wrong. Not all experts have degrees. Your intelligence isn’t measured by how many degrees you have, and learning doesn’t have to take place in a classroom.
I live this every week. I’m always helping lower belts on the mat. Teaching them new skills or reminding them of something they had forgotten or, more importantly, when to use a particular move.
The teachers unions don’t want parents realizing that they are capable of teaching their own kids. If they did, they’d have more parents getting involved in public schools or removing their kids. That’d cut off the gravy train.Report
Overall, I agree with this post. Especially given how much I’ve taught myself over the years.
I have, however, 2 comments.
1) How a person engages with material that they are trying to learn affects how well they learn it. IMHO, a good teacher helps students find interesting ways to engage with the material. A bad teacher can make the material so un-engaging as to strip away that intrinsic motivation for the student. So while anyone can teach another person, not everyone can foster that motivation*.
2) Yes, experts can be wrong, and not every expert needs a degree (nor does a degree necessarily make one an expert). But as someone who worries about the death of expertise, can we at least agree that an education or deep experience gives one the benefit of being an expert and thus the bar for discounting them should be higher than your average Joe?
Sure, Em or Burt might not be an expert on the law, but they both have that shiny JD and bar membership, so when they talk about the law, we should pay heed, unless they do something egregious enough to damage that credibility.
*Related to my second point – a stack on education degrees doesn’t mean that a given teacher is good at fostering an intrinsic motivation in students. There is a difference between knowledge and talent, and expertise grants knowledge, not necessarily talent.Report
I have been a successful applied mathematician, and have successfully taught calculus and some odds and ends at the college level. Teaching math concepts to the littles is a whole ‘nother thing: there’s a reason why math education is its own discipline. I wouldn’t trust anyone’s kids to me short of the levels where I’ve previously taught.Report
Agreed, math can’t be taught to the littles on talent alone, you have to have some specialized knowledge if you want to be effective.Report
Possessing knowledge and communicating knowledge are two distinct skills.Report
We need an up-vote or something. Also, communicating knowledge at an expert level, or on a level for those whose goal is to become expert, is quite different than communicating for beginners who have no intent of ever becoming expert.
This is a contentious topic. When I was getting my MA in public policy, I was excused from the numerical methods class (based on being at least as qualified to teach it as the professor who did). I complained bitterly to the department that they were teaching people enough to be dangerous, without even telling them that they were dangerous because they weren’t learning critical pieces.Report
I’m a better math person than literacy but a better literacy teacher than math teacher because of how I understand it and communicate it.
My sons are math-y too. Me trying to help them learn “new math” is a disaster. It makes no sense to any of us.Report
I complained bitterly to the department that they were teaching people enough to be dangerous, without even telling them that they were dangerous because they weren’t learning critical pieces.
Everything that’s wrong with social science in one sentence.
Well, that and the fact that ideological uniformity leads to research being subjected to wildly asymmetric levels of scrutiny depending on whether it supports or weakens the narrative. But with sufficient rigor and respect for the difficulty of doing causal inference correctly, that wouldn’t be nearly as big a problem.Report
My point was that communicating knowledge is a skill that is heavily affected by talent. Or, if you prefer, there is an element of art to communicating knowledge.
That said, when it comes to young kids and math, talent alone is probably not enough, you have to have posses that knowledge too.Report
Oh yes, sorry, I was agreeing with you.
Lots of folks know lots of math but can’t make that available to others.
Lots of folks are great communicators but maybe don’t have the subject matter knowledge. For real little ones, this is usually okay because they know “enough” (shape names, numbers, counting). But it quickly accelerates.
My sons look at 6+7 and know it’s 13. And they can explain a couple ways to get there. But then the book wants us to practice “Near Doubles”… which just doesn’t compute for any of us. It’s a great strategy for lots of kids but none of the three of us so we just stumble through it. I do talk to them about the importance of A) having multiple strategies and B) knowing their audience: if the teacher wants to see it a certain way, its incumbent upon them to understand that way at least enough to show it (even if they may use alternate strategies behind the scenes or to check their work).Report
I’m doing the same with Bug. Sure, use the Area Method, because that is what the lesson wants, but we’ll verify with what we are comfortable with.Report
Meanwhile I’m still trying to get the 14-year-old to add without her fingers.Report
If it helps you feel better, I sucked at math until college…Report
Great piece! Thanks for sharing it with us.Report
Thanks for writing! I’m a teacher and agree with the thrust of this post. What I want to contribute may feel like agreement or disagreement so I’m curious to hear your take.
I agree that you can’t really force anyone to learn something but I do think we can be highly influential on if they learn. The environment we create in classrooms, the opportunities we create for learning, the way we present knowledge, the strategies we offer to develop skills… all of this can go a long way towards if and how much someone learns.
Maybe this is more true for the young (preschool) kids I teacher (it sounds like you teach middle or high school).Report
One of my favorite little stories about teaching involved a middle-aged guy who decided to start playing World of Warcraft. He casually mentioned that he was new when he was still struggling as a low-level schlub and another player took him under his wing and explained the game to him, showing him the subtle nuances of how to play.
After a couple of sessions, they switched to voice and the player was, like, 12. “Squeakers” is the term for them, I think.
This kid was a master at explaining the dynamics and flow of the game, how to use the character, how to team up with others, so on and so forth.
The guy finished the essay explaining how the kid would make a great team lead someday.Report
I hope there was a way to communicate that to the kid. It sounds like exactly the kind of skill a person could have and not realize it until his late 20’s.Report