That's an extremely common theme in the world. Teachers, therapists, doctors, etc. Often the instructor is completely fucked up, and is trying to cope with that by teaching/helping others. But they still have insightful and good advice, even if they don't follow it themselves. Don't focus on the instructor as some kind of idol that, if their perfection wanes, so does your attention to their teaching. Instead focus on the message and whether it will work for you. Many people find that it does, and it's that direct result that matters.
No argument here, except to say not all instructors are good teachers. Sometimes we’re lucky and get good ones who despite their biases teach us the fundamentals.
I want to agree with this because teaching IS a great learning tool but one needs to have some idea of what they are doing. Teaching helps to identify the problem areas we fool ourselves into believing we understand well.
Youtube is an amazing resource but it's also an ocean of incompetence and phony expertise by people doing exactly what you prescribe. Just be careful not to contribute to the ever expanding circle jerk of self congratulatory mediocrity. No one wants that.
Terrible instructors will be terrible in any medium, so the problem isn't with the medium but the instructors. Great slideshow though, lots of insight for those of us that do actually care about how we teach.
I've seen this in other disciplines, and if anything to worse degree. I've witnessed situations where the old masters can't talk to the journeymen, and the new masters can barely talk to the beginners. You learn by watching and whatever the people a couple years ahead of you can decipher for you.
To make matters worse, what often happens is that the instructors believe they have taught something, and they don't witness the actual learning take place, so they continue in their belief in their practices.
IMO, instructors who indulge this kind of thing do the whole class and especially the asking student a disservice because the opportunity for self-teaching is lost. Self-teaching is much more important than whatever the lesson of the moment is.
Very well done piece. I'd just add that students can also learn a lot from a person they don't love, if that person happens to be very good at something the student is internally motivated to learn more about.
Someone driven to know more about something will somehow manage to overlook teacher's humanity.
First principle: It's a lot easier to teach someone something once they understand why it's important to them.
I struggle with this as an instructor. There was a study that showed that students of low-rated instructors had better 10-year outcomes.
Clearly that doesn't mean you should be a crap instructor, but there's something to be said for a measure of student unhappiness.
And it makes sense; students who had to work harder with minimal support built up better mental models along the way as they struggled through it.
At the same time, sometimes being there to say a magic word or make an non-obvious connection is also really beneficial even if the student didn't have to work hard for it.
Part of me also feels that CS (my subject) doesn't _need_ to be impossibly hard, that a good instructor tunes the material like a spinning instructor so that it's a challenging uphill climb when it should be, and easy when it should be.
A student still has to work, but not so impossibly hard that they're destroyed.
To get to the top of the mountain, the three options are hike straight up, take the switchbacks, or take the gondola.
Straight up weeds out folks for sure. Only the best ones make it.
The gondola, well, they learn nothing.
I'm a fan of the guided switchbacks. I can make it steep when I want, and chill when I want. And hopefully tune that in a way that gets more people jobs at the end of the day.
Difficult is important when it comes to learning. But there can be too much of a good thing.
Even in the context of "helping", some people have to show they could teach the class. They do this by asking leading questions, pointing out any mistake, no matter how pedantic, and other obnoxious, interruptive actions.
Students quickly recognize the adversarial relationship and, depending on how the teacher responds, either lose confidence in the teacher or tube out the cock fight.
As the teacher, in a short-term environment (like a substitute or a half-day seminar), you have to shut that person down unequivocally. In a longer lasting environment, give that person a chance to teach.
There is an enormous benefit to having a really good teacher or coach to help the students who got something subtle a bit wrong way back up the chain. You need someone who doesn’t only deeply understand how to do the task perfectly, but also has a deep understanding of all the different ways the task can be done improperly, and what the underlying misunderstandings or problems are which cause those mistakes, who knows the best way to nudge the learner back on track, and who has endless empathy and good will and enough time to make sure the correction happens.
I recommend Shinichi Suzuki’s lovely little 1969 book about “talent education”, Nurtured by Love, https://amzn.com/0874875846
It's embarrassing at first, but it can be turned into a learning experience for everyone. It can foster a more engaged, collaborative classroom when an instructor admits when he's wrong and graciously thanks students for improving their own knowledge. That said, the instructor should have the strongest grasp of the material.
The complement to this is that after you've learned something it is easy to forget the pain you went through. Empathy can be a powerful tool for pedagogy. If your learner can see that you understand the struggle they are going through it can help remove a layer of shame and self-doubt. If, on the other hand, an educator regularly calls things easy, basic, trivial, or simple (or worse demeans someone for not understanding) the lack of empathy will be apparent and learning will be impeded. One thing Sal Khan has said is that video lessons are uniquely effective because there is no chance the educator will become frustrated with the learner even if they need to repeat the lesson a dozen times. In person and in our writings it can be hard to remember the struggle, but it can be one of the most helpful things we do as we train someone new to any task or concept.
The service you seek is to gain knowledge and abilities. There is a body of evidence to suggest that you cannot gain that knowledge and experience without making considerable effort, and that the role of the instructors, be they professor or lowly TA, is to give you the opportunity. As such, getting easy-to-understand explanations, perfectly produced and complete notes, and attending entertaining lectures, is not the best way of achieving the stated goal.
Many lecturers are indeed less than ideal, and many instructors similarly fall short, but just because the students give them poor ratings, and complain about work loads, that does not mean that they are not being given exactly what is needed to achieve their stated goals.
You don't get physically fit by listening to work-out videos and watching people jog in the park. You have to go out and do it yourself. People hire personal trainers to devise a plan, and then to shout at them to make them stick to it and to put in the work.
Maybe that's a good analogy. Maybe to get good at math (and programming) you actually need to put in the work, and true learning is born from the effort and confusion you go through before enlightenment.
I like this but I think all advice suffers from the problem of the people needing it being incapable of using it and the people who are capable of using it already know it.
You learn by doing x time. There's also a place for study, reading, etc. to supplement this.
This is true in software development. It's true in martial arts. It's true in chess. (the 3 things I've invested some effort in progressing in). I've taught martial arts but there's no magic advice I can give people that will instantly take them to the next level, they need to experience and work through things to progress. Having a teacher helps (a lot).
I get your point. But I'm not sure I can ever grok the mindset of someone who thinks, "good, that'll teach 'em". Not sure I'd ever want to work with that individual.
A great teacher understands what will trigger progress in one person and what will trigger progress in another. Some people need a soft touch, some people need a kick in the ass.
Perhaps the CEO recognized that this would work in this case. For another person, perhaps another technique would have been tried. Regarding the story here, this last paragraph is all speculation, of course. We don't know how the CEO would've handled a different person. I'm really just addressing your point about teaching technique.
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