What is the Sound of Right Brain Teaching?

Brian Millar, my teacher friend, forwards an article titled “What Makes a Good Teacher.”

It is worth looking at, because it is a fine example of what is wrong with most stuff coming out of the Education Schools. It is only too typical of the genre.

Most notably, the author lays down rules for what makes a good teacher without citing any authority, evidence, or argument for them. Where did they come from? Were they beamed from Mars through her tinfoil helmet?

Perhaps this comes from the continuing need in the field to conceal the fact that it has no verifiable data. But the most disturbing aspect of this is that it is a hellacious model to present to someone aspiring to be a classroom teacher, because it is exactly what you should not do. You should never teach what you are teaching as the received Truth From On High (unless it is). You should give your students their own heads, and let them think for themselves. Indeed, that is the most valuable thing you can teach them. The UNESCO respondents seem to agree with me.

The next problem is that the terminology is deliberately inexact--inexact enough for people to interpret the advice more or less as they like to support their own preferences, or to claim that their present practice, whatever it might be, fits. "Have expectations of success for all students"? How is that manifested? "Tolerate ambiguity"?

It is, in sum a waste of my time as a reader, and would be a waste of my time as a student. It has zero content.

I especially love the quote from the Tao Te Ching with which it ends. The Tao Te Ching is an extremely ironic document; it has much the paradoxical nature of the Zen koan. It is unlikely to be helpful to the typical classroom teacher. What is one to make of this:

Some say that my teaching is nonsense.
Others call it lofty but impractical.
But to those who have looked inside themselves,
this nonsense makes perfect sense.
And to those who put it into practice,
this loftiness has roots that go deep.
I have just three things to teach:
simplicity, patience, compassion.
Simple in actions and thoughts,
you return to the source of being.
Patient with both friends and enemies,
you accord with the way things are.
Compassionate toward yourself,
You reconcile all being in the world.

Oooh… profound.

The Tao Te Ching also advises that the best government is one that feeds the people's bellies, keeps them frightened, and tells them nothing.