Hold it right there!
My job is to teach teachers (and I have a PhD in Education Science - adult professional education, that is) and one of the main lessons we try to teach them is that no teacher can know everything.
Death Sticks you say? I must go home and re-think my life!
Apologies for the tangent, but you've nailed me to the wall on something I said and something I didn't say. Let's pick apart your kill shot here and try and resuscitate the point...
Firstly, I never said "teachers can no everything" nor do I assume they do. There is a positive/negative opposite from what I said, to what you've pinned me on.
I said "don't know what they are talking about" not "know everything". This is fear, not overconfidence, pure fear.
Somewhere deep within my psyche is a bit of me that drives to lectures every morning terrified someone will find out I'm a fraud, that all my years of remembering stuff and re-applying it will be revealed for being just the same as anyone else using the same trick with different life experience. That someone will walk into my classroom sit nice and quiet and when I get to a point. Indicate I'm wrong and demonstrate exactly how.
I used to be that student too, so I know the role...
Not because I wanted to catch someone out, but because I take a genuine pleasure in knowing stuff. You might have listened to my writing interview with Drew where I mentioned it took a while to realise,
knowing doesn't mean you should share.
The fear doesn't project the "know-it-all" you've defined. The fear projects the worthless; the idea of turning up and being unable to contribute anything to the subject and the lesson. To be overtaken and left behind. This isn't about lead or contribute, its about permanently being dragged under the wheels or pulled behind on a rope. Its a particularly sharp lesson when you work in an area that is defined by technology enabling results.
Teachers need to be humble enough to recognise this and be willing to learn from their students. Thus, collaborative learning where the teacher joins the students in discussing and solving problems, or analysing the data that the students have gathered is the only way that a teacher can truly teach. Teachers are experts of learning methods and the ways people learn and can therefore guide the group on their way to knowledge, but they cannot provide all that knowledge by themselves.
Indeed, the student centered pedagogy soap box. I'm being a little facetious, but the honest point here is I agree with you and didn't claim otherwise. I see myself as a facilitator and take that very seriously. I take it you've read Paulo Freire on this?
Humble is absolutely the word and your use here implies your perception of what I said is the opposite. I've re-read my point and I can't quite see where you'd get that impression? But, then with your background I would expect the dicta-teacher is an archetype you're familiar with, it is certainly one I am familiar with...
In short, teachers are not fountains of content knowledge. They are fountains of knowledge on _learning_ and supporting learning - or at least they should be.
Again, thanks for the ponti-rant. I hope you can see from the above how I'm actually agreeing with you.
Let's re-focus slightly. Dave made a personal observation about me, I've replied where I think he misrepresented things. I then added a little tongue in cheek, which was labelled as such. With respect, you've now skewered me on a stick I can't see I deserved or appreciate. The only flesh on the barbecue is mine.
To summarise, the hypocrisy I'm talking about is that the people entrusted and employed to teach are motivated by fear that they will be the people left behind and use that fear to ensure they won't be. That doesn't mean they then project that into being the source of all knowledge to their students. The two things don't necessarily connect.
If you'd like a discussion on the merits and flaws of difficult educational attitudes and practices, I'm sure we'd have a fine time going through them, but that might be a bit misplaced on Darren's thread, so perhaps to PM, eh?
