dogmatic pedagogy

June 30, 2019 · 5 min read · essay, writing, society

I have studied in 6 different schools in india, representing different classes of society. I have studied under the ‘I barely teach’ history teacher, to the ‘I don’t know English’ English teacher of out villages to the ‘I know it all’ chemistry teacher to the ‘I am a smart’ Math teacher from the cities. Not to mention, the ‘I never teach’ Electronics Professors to the ‘I don’t know log(10)’ Math professor. Even though I respect their age. To me, any person who teaches held less value than the ones who did something else.

It is safe for me to say I have a reasonable set of teachers for me to assess with. Of all my years of school going. I can’t think of anyone who amazed or inspired me. I have only seen a couple of above mediocre ones. Most of the teachers that I’ve faced are sub par and I would not prefer learning under again.

But even after all these, every teachers day, These teachers (whom I consider) useless beings who could take a bright kid and tone him down to a mediocre one, are celebrated upon. No teacher ever that I have seen had admitted that, ‘I am here because I am not smart enough for an actual job.’ I remember when I was in 10th during a teachers day celebration. A teacher said, “Teachers sacrifice their lives for their pupils, they are true martyrs”.

I have never received an actual answer from a teacher to a doubt that I had. Only, truly unnecessary explanations which misses my question completely (Probably because that’s what they know) or “I’ll check and tell you tomorrow”, the tomorrow never comes. It’s never gotten to actual fruition.

I have actually had a biology teacher who started a chapter saying ‘Evolution is a dry subject. But, you’ll get at least one, ten mark question from this chapter.’ I can’t even imagine how you could make evolution boring. And yet she did. It doesn’t matter I read Darwin’s “On the origin of species” later on. What matters is that, A teacher manages to mangle a beautiful subject into a worthless chore that you have to do to get marks.

As anyone can observe, I hate teachers and professors. But, recently In my pursuit of trying to learn, I had to attend some online seminars and attend some virtual classes. And they are refreshingly supportive, surprisingly friendly and remarkably good. I have never felt wanting to go to a class and meet a teacher so bad.

when I reflect on it. Nothing big has changed. The teacher has just gotten a lot friendlier and a lot knowledgeable. The gentle empathy of saying, ‘I know this is all confusing, But once you wrap your head around it. It’ll be very easy.’ or accepting that mistake that he/she’d done (Which was new to me because I’ve never had teachers accept that they’ve erred). or the congenial nature with which they approach the pupil. These subtle things make a remarkable difference in the whole experience of learning. Which I’ve never known existed. Studying has always been a drudgery that I had to do.

for example, I did the course ‘CS50’ taught in Harvard by David Malan. Each course starts with an anecdotal interesting and intriguing history in computer science. And he’s so engaged with the content that he is teaching, with new demonstrations each time to explain critical ideas. It left me yearning for wanting to be in that class. And another course from Stanford University on “Behavioural Evolution” by Dr. Robert Sapolsky. Which is another great example of a great teacher. There is this one moment in his ethology lecture, where Robert Sapolsky couldn’t actually recollect a research done on a specific topic, while thinking what it was, he blatantly without any inhibition of sorts asked his students “does anybody here read that? could be great if you could help an old man out.”

It is such a small thing. But, I could never imagine any of my “real” teachers accept that their student might know something more than them. Most of them have this illusory arrogance in them that, they are very knowledgeable and is the smartest person in the class. I’ve tried a lot of times to somehow coerce my teachers into saying, “I don’t know this”. But to no avail.

I think this skewed availability of great teachers is extremely analogous to “The rich get richer and the poor get poorer” principle or the “unbalanced economic growth” ideology. But in the intellectual space. put simply, “very knowledgeable people get more knowledgeable and ignorant people get more ignorant”. It is sort of the same, but with different dynamics. The mode of transaction between individuals is not money, but knowledge and data.

It’s the naive, ignorant kid in the village who needs a great teacher to light a spark. But, it’s the kid in Harvard (who already has a raging fire for learning) who’ll get the greatest of all teachers. This skewness is very striking of a capitalistic society, which incentivises people who achieve and stops people who don’t.

There is no getting away from the society with all its faults and failures. It takes tremendous effort to learn and understand when you are at the very bottom of the intellectual food chain. and it takes more struggle than that to progress forward. Yet, it is so much easier to stay ignorant and be laid back