60 years ago my mother was growing up in Romania. Many of her teachers were old spinsters. No family or other major interests to distract them from teaching. She says it showed in their level of involvement. Now, far be it from me to suggest we require or even encourage spinsterhood. But maybe there is something we can re-learn here. Maybe there are ways to encourage more teachers to consider teaching as a noble path in life, and not as an arbitrary career choice. With such an attitude, maybe teachers will be able to resist some of the frantic dispersing of energy with which modern life seduces us. Come to think of it, not only teachers - all of us can use such an approach, and concentrate on the most important things: Our family, and our Noble Cause.
80-90 years ago, my grandmother was growing up in Austria. From 5th grade to 12th grade she had the same class teacher. Having followed the kids for so long, the teacher of course knew each one of them quite well. She was able to notice when something was wrong, and could use her familiarity with the students to work it out. When I was in 7th grade, my accomplishments in school started to deteriorate. My class teacher knew me only for a few months, so she couldn't be really aware that something is changing. Nobody noticed, and my achievements continued to be less than brilliant. all the way to graduation. I am doing fine now, but clearly our path in life shouldn't be determined by neglect - even if everybody meant well and there is no blame to assign. The constancy my grandmother enjoyed seems to be a good feature for an education system. It would be good to find a way to work it into our system.
110 years ago, my great grandfather was studying to become a Rabi. Probably went to a Yeshiva (the communal memory is sketchy). He didn't become a Rabi - he decided he is not worthy of it. There is a lot to be said about the traditional methods of studying in Yeshivas. Much was written abort these methods and their advantages. I won't go into much details, but I can mention a few guiding principles: Studying with a teacher in small groups; peers studying together; arguing the issues at hand; finding relevant connections between the subject matter and current events; reopening study subjects over and over again. Social groups - mostly religions - that place an emphasis on learning have been in existence for thousands of years. Some of their methods are still alive, and we can and should learn from them.
In the middle ages (sorry - no family memory here), apprenticeship was a common method for transferring knowledge and skills. In some existing traditional societies, apprenticeship is still in wide use. In some modern professions, such as accounting, law and medicine, a form of apprenticeship - aka "internship" - is common. This practice has a serious danger of drifting into exploitation, but it also has the potential to transfer informal knowledge in a way quite impossible in modern teacher/student relationship. How do we get the benefit of such knowledge transfer without allowing abuse? It would take some work.
Throughout the ages, the well-to-do were able to get personal tutors for their kids. The well-to-do are usually pretty good at taking care of themselves. Surely there are advantages in a teacher whose full attention is given to one child. By definition, this one-on-one teacher/student ratio is very difficult to scale up to a mass education system. But the advantages are such, that it would be a shame to give up on it without a fight. There are ways to enjoy some of that 1:1 tutor:student work, some of the time.
Looking into lessons from old education methods is a good subject for a book. The above text does not attempt to provide a full analysis, but it raises the issue and looks at some of the possibilities.
No comments:
Post a Comment