To Teach (or NOT)

While grading college papers, I decided that students don’t have to agree with the teacher. But they do have to demonstrate that they understand what the teacher said. The teacher’s task is to help each student learn to think.

As a concerned mother plans meals that provide essential nutrients and serves up those meals in ways that encourage her children to eat; so the teacher is true to the text and delivers the material in an attractive package. I try to make learning fun. Sesame Street and Blue’s Clues continue to show us that it’s easier to learn when we enjoy the process.

As a student I thought the educational process called for me to stuff in the facts and retain them long enough to regurgitate them onto exams. I have reevaluated the process. Facts continue to be important but they are only building blocks for attitudes and ideas. This presents a challenge to both teacher and student. The easiest tests to prepare for and grade are based on facts. But if life is a Jacobean wrestling match, facts are no longer the be all and end all.

In working with Dr. Bill Spady (author of Total Leaders) I had to adjust my thinking even further. Spady calls attention to the inability of grades to adequately portray what a student has learned. He came to this understanding from studies showing that the valedictorians at Harvard were failing to adjust to life outside academia. He suggests that a portfolio of some sort would be a better indication of a student’s mastery of the material than a letter grade. One of Spady’s tenets is that all students can learn. This does not mean that all students learn at the same rate but – given time and inclination – any student can master specific material. I agree.

Frank Bettger, author of How I Raised Myself from Failure to Success in Selling, tells about a businessman watching a game show on television. Over the course of several tapings, one of the contestants had won a huge amount of money. The businessman volunteered that he’d be willing to hire the fellow but he wouldn’t pay him any more than the cost of a good almanac. And that was for a lifetime of service. Like that businessman I believe that true value comes from the ability to use information.

The most important learning usually takes place outside of the classroom. I’m not talking about study or "persuasion taking place in the absence of the persuader." The most important lessons in college are often learned in the dormitories. Living with another person is a tremendous learning experience. In middle school and high school extracurricular activities shape students in emotional as well as physical ways.

Thus I suggest that students are to be held accountable for classroom learning and they are to be supported in learning how to live outside the classroom. It is this combination of learning – inside and outside the classroom – that best prepares students for life and leadership.