On Teaching Styles

I usually get a bunch of complaints about my classroom policies from whinos disgruntled students. Mostly they boil down to the door being closed too early, and prohibition against phones, even to take pictures of the board (yes they are forbidden in case you are taking my class and didn’t know).

Perhaps one day I will write a more thorough perspective on my class room management philosophy. Until such time here are a few links that I hope would explain the method behind the madness.

Teaching styles

Classroom management

It must be remembered that there are different approaches to classroom management; and the choice of style is as much about the personality, age, and maturity of the instructed, as it is about the personality of the instructor.

Additionally, the size and quality of the cohort is also important in judging the amount of control that has to be exerted over the class. What works in a class of nearly 10 students will lead to chaos in a class of 100. What is self-evident to bright students, must be belabored upon the average, and will forever remain a mystery to those who have sleepwalked their way into higher education (presumably at the urging of their parents).

All fingers are not equal they say, nor are all students. I believe students who are academically driven and emotionally mature should be allowed to flourish, rather than be left to drown in the sea of indifference that plagues the multitude.

True learning requires discipline against distraction. A student failing to concentrate is like an athlete gorging on candies. Strict intellectual training is what makes contemplation possible. One source of the current crisis in education is that strand in modern education that conflates ease with compassion.

Teachers as Authority Figures

Central to teaching (as it is to parenting) is the notion of authority. One cannot stand at the dais and refuse the burden of authority. One cannot sit upon the bench and refuse to submit to authority.

But authority is a form of responsibility, not domination. The job of the teacher is to represent the world as it is, not to negotiate it with students. Progressive permissiveness will be a betrayal of both students and the culture of which the teacher stands as guardian.

At the end of The Crisis of Education, Hannah Arendt ruminates thusly (emphasis added):

Education is the point at which we decide whether we love the world enough to assume responsibility for it and by the same token have it from that ruin which, except for renewal, except for the coming of the new and young, would be inevitable. And education, too, is where we decide whether we love our children enough not to expel them from our world and leave them to their own devices , nor to strike from their hands their chance of undertaking something new, something unforeseen by us, but to prepare them in advance for the task of renewing a common world.

Some other texts on the art of teaching