QotD, musings

[drwex]

This passed across my screen today:

The primary task of a useful teacher is to teach his students to recognize 'inconvenient' facts

The speaker is Max Weber, turn-of-the(last)-century German sociologist and economist. If you don't understand why America is so materialistic you haven't read enough Weber.

I think the quote applies outside of teaching. It's kind of a nice summation of much of how I look at life.

Much elided here. Need thinking. Commentary welcome.

Comments

[catness.livejournal.com]

It's definitely good to be able to recognize 'inconvenient' facts, and I believe it's also a positive thing to be guided in that direction, if it's not something you normally do or are failing to do when you should. However, the kind of person who considers it their mission and/or duty to point out such 'inconvenient' facts is no fun at parties.

[dpolicar]

True.
OTOH, pointing them out against resistence isn't a particularly good way to teach the skill of recognizing them out.
Activist and teacher are not the same role, though one person can certainly play them both.

[drwex]

I think you've hit on a key point, so I'm going to think out loud in response. I can see what you wrote as pointing at one end of a spectrum that stretches from an overt formal classroom to an explicit relaxed social situation. And consider that the meaning of "teacher" isn't constant along that spectrum.

Looked at another way, is "teacher" a role, or a relationship?

American society is almost unique in its informal relationship to teachers. In other cultures it's quite natural address someone as "Herr Professor" or "Sensei" no matter where one encounters them, and to treat them as ?being in that mode?/?being that thing? all the time. This may include a certain formality, but for my purposes I want to think about the implication that treating someone that way implies, on the students' parts, a willingness to learn wherever, whenever, however learning is presented. We might revisit taura_g's concept of the "classroom of life" and muse on the notion of experience-centric learning versus or complementary to fact-centric learning.

No conclusions, just more thinking to do...