“There is no such thing as teaching”

I have just returned from a memorial service for Tony Sirignano, a well-liked and inspiring teacher from sjs. Listening to the comments caused me to think again about teaching, and I am more than ever of the opinion that “there is no such thing as teaching”–what there is, instead, is “helping to learn.”

Now, “there is no such thing as teaching” is an admittedly attention-grabbing oversimplication (somewhat along the lines of “all you have to do is die”). But, I think there’s some merit behind the exaggeration.

Ultimately, I would argue, our goal as teachers (like our success as parents) is to make ourselves unneeded by our students (not unwanted, which is a different point). So that while lecturing may be an efficient way to transmit selected (presumably researched and edited) information, for instance, unless the students retain and use the content, it is effectively an exercise in declamation.

So, if our goal is to render ourselves redundant in our chosen field, how best do we do that?  Perhaps we can take a leaf from the coaches’ playbook: set things up where teacher and student (like coach and players, ideally) are working toward a common goal whereat immediate success is measured by a third party (in the coaching realm, another team and referee).  AP teachers, of course, are familiar with such an approach.  While we’re not formally evaluated on our AP scores, it’s foolish to think no-one notices what they are.  We don’t get to choose the students who sign up for our courses, yet we are definitely judged (to a certain extent, at least) by their performance on a test we don’t design or grade.

More to the point…. Wagner (and many others) talk about habits of mind and skills and attitudes necessary for success in the 21st century.  There’s a general consensus that these involve “learning how to learn” since people will have “more jobs” than in the past or will be working a significant part of their lives in jobs that don’t exist when they leave our classrooms.

Granted that the only purpose of education is not simply to prepare students for jobs (nor, despite what some think, for college admission), nonetheless I would agree that “learning how to learn” is important.  Of course, specific skills (like the ability to communicate and persuade in various was) are also necessary.  And in spite of postmodernism’s nebulous angst, some cultural content is still relevant.

But for this post, let’s go with “learn how to learn.”

How do we get our students ready to learn?  By helping them learn how to teach themselves.  By providing tools for learning, including what I think is one of the most important tools of all–learning how to ask good questions.  Coupled with that ability, of course, is the ability to decide what a “good question” is in different contexts.