NPR is starting off a series titled "50 Great Teachers" and is starting with Socrates:
We're starting this celebration of teaching with Socrates, the superstar teacher of the ancient world. He was sentenced to death more than 2,400 years ago for "impiety" and "corrupting" the minds of the youth of Athens.
But Socrates' ideas helped form the foundation of Western philosophy and the scientific method of inquiry. And his question-and-dialogue-based teaching style lives on in many classrooms as the Socratic method.
Most of us have been influenced by our teachers, and some of them may have even been great ones even if, unlike Socrates, they toiled in anonymity. So, I ask this question: Who were (or are) your greatest teachers, why, and what did you learn from them that made them so great?
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Ethanol-fueled on Thursday October 30 2014, @01:29AM
One teacher who comes to mind was named Mr. Mattison, who was an instructor in the USAF electronic principles class on Lackland Air Force Base. He was twice demoted while in the service for getting into fights and had much of his teeth knocked out. He was the first person to show us why radially-mounted capacitors had slots in them, because he would get one and put each lead into the hot/neutral slots of a power strip and flick the light switch, causing it to literally blow its top ("open a window before the fire alarm goes off. Thank you.")
He had a laser-pointer he liked to shine in the eyes of pigeons resting outside the windows, and gave us another informative lesson about what happens when you plug 120 VAC into a chip designed for only a few volts DC. Predictably, the microprocessor training set the USAF was phasing out went "Poof!" and emitted a puff of smoke.
(Score: 1) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 30 2014, @02:08AM
Reminds me of the time Richard Feynman got into a fight in the men's room of a bar. He showed up in class the next day with a black eye and leaned over the lectern and said menacingly, "Any questions?"
BTW Feynman's on the NPR list too. I know that for sure, and I haven't seen the list.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 30 2014, @03:27PM
Sounds like a poor role model and very immature.
Nope, just an asshole .
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday October 31 2014, @01:42AM
Sounds like a poor role model and very immature.
[...]
Nope, just an asshole .
This isn't finishing school. What makes great teachers is often very counterintuitive.
(Score: 2) by fliptop on Thursday October 30 2014, @01:37AM
Dr. Scott Campbell [usf.edu] and Dr. Stuart Wilkinson [usf.edu] were my all-time favorites. Dr. Campbell was an excellent lecturer and very fair when it came to the material he taught and how he tested you on it. His manner was very approachable and he had a youthful enthusiasm as well (this was quite some time ago). If you paid attention in lecture it was very easy to get an A in his classes.
Dr. Wilkinson was a hard-ass but the methods and techniques I learned in his lab class were something I carried throughout my career. He accepted only perfection on labs and it was a shock at first, but by the end of the semester I understood why completeness and attention to detail was so critical. It was nearly impossible to get an A in his lab class.
Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.
(Score: 2) by arslan on Thursday October 30 2014, @01:50AM
Some of my "greatest" teachers are really bad. They are so bad that I decided to learn by myself and sometimes that journey is better than one where someone teaches you. Perhaps that is why some of the teachers of the greatest minds remain in anonymity.
Einstein failed at school. Maybe its not him but his teacher.
I come from a generation and culture where the teacher is always right and when a kid does bad at school it is the kid, not the teacher or the school. How stupid is that?
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 30 2014, @03:31PM
Not stupid at all. The greatest thing a school can teach is how to deal with injustice. It's one of the hardest lessons in life to learn: when to be upset, when to let things go, when to fight the good fight. Learning how to deal well with unjust teachers is a great lesson, if you can pass it.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday October 31 2014, @01:45AM
The greatest thing a school can teach is how to deal with injustice.
And it's also the worst thing a school can teach. I have to wonder how many little tyrants and boot lickers got their start in a brutal, authoritarian school?
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 30 2014, @02:27AM
I've learned a lot from Lennart. He has taught me how not to write software. He has taught me how not to behave at a presentation. He has taught me how to deal with my Linux system not booting properly thanks to a shitty, broken init system that was installed against my will when I did a Debian update.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Kell on Thursday October 30 2014, @02:34AM
To turn the problem on its head, I'm a university lecturer teaching mechatronics to fourth year students. I want to become a great teacher. What advice can people give me about what worked in their classes and what didn't?
Scientists ask questions. Engineers solve problems.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 30 2014, @02:47AM
When a student asks a question, a good teacher tries to see the student's POV rather than firing off a canned answer. Why did s/he ask that? If they're confused, then something needs to be clarified. If they're misguided, then maybe the answer should take the form of "OK, suppose we did that. Now look..."
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Ethanol-fueled on Thursday October 30 2014, @02:50AM
Demand that all students take notes by hand and turn their ringers off, and any student brandishing a gadget or emitting a gadget's ringtone or other noise gets only one Mulligan before they're ejected from the class for "disruptive behavior." Exceptions to the rule like Doctors-on-call or drug dealers must provide written documentation beforehand.
Most of your students that actually make it through the whole program will thank you for it later.
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Thursday October 30 2014, @03:01AM
I'm sitting here trying to think what makes a great teacher -- I've had so many excellent and great teachers I wouldn't know where to start. I had only one really bad teacher all through school, for 8th grade American History. He managed to make the subject dry and dense; partly himself, partly his choice of textbook. That was the only class where I ever got a D. I only had one really bad teacher in college, for Physical Chemistry; he could not relate to students and was impossible to talk to (he had some sort of OCD/fear of errors that really interfered, and only taught because it let him do research).
I guess what distinguished my teachers was that they were excited to be there, every single day. They wanted to share knowledge, not just stuff it into our heads. They'd bend over backwards trying to impart understanding. We always had the rote learning that puts a subject at your fingertips for life, but it was never just memorization; we were taught the fundamentals behind it as well. The result was that our schools were consistently in the top 1% nationwide.
And we were expected to be disciplined, and to do our best. No one acted out in class (on the rare occasion when someone did, out came the paddle). It was embarrassing to be seen with a grade below par. The eggheads were the school heroes.
And we had very little homework (and none at all, other than quarterly book reports, until 9th grade). The current craze for homework is not teaching. It overloads young minds that then never get a chance to assimilate the day's learning. We don't expect adults to work 12 hours a day; why do we now expect it of kids, who get 7 hours of school and 5 hours of homework, starting in grade school??!
I applaud you for aspiring to be a great teacher, and I hope your students remember you well, as I do my many wonderful teachers.
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 3, Informative) by davester666 on Thursday October 30 2014, @03:19AM
1. Actually know what you are lecturing about. I've had profs who literally worked through a textbook a chapter or so a week, each week making a lecture out of it, and be completely unable to answer ANY questions about the lecture he just gave [oh yeah, also don't save all questions for the end]. So every week, there would be a bunch of questions, he would write them down, then at the start of the next class, proceed to answer them. Completely worthless. Naturally, this prof kept teaching this class, the same way, every year, no matter how low a rating the students gave him]
2. Be interested in what you are teaching. My best university prof was a Dr. Kharighani, who was always super-enthusiastic about teaching us 2nd and 3rd year math. Of course, the university turfed him right away [even though he clearly had the highest student rating of any prof for classes taken by Engineers].
3. Be interested in your students actually learning the material. Dr. K would notice the kind of questions you asked about the work, and would not only just answer the question right away because he knew the material, but also would figure out if you were having trouble understanding the principle he was teaching or just how to apply it in a specific circumstance.
4. He would also make late-comers sit in front, and make them pay attention. Occasionally, chalk would fly.
5. As well, he would notice AND ask about why you missed the last class, in front of everyone. People rarely missed his class [and generally didn't want to because he generally made it interesting].
(Score: 2) by Joe Desertrat on Thursday October 30 2014, @04:57AM
First of all, you have to be excited about your subject. That's not enough of course, you have to be able to draw in your students so that they share that excitement. I wish I could tell you how to do that, but it seems to be an art that few know, maybe they have it at the start, maybe they learn it, perhaps an acting class could help you there. Of course, you would need a great teacher there...
Second, try to keep it in the classroom. Some homework is obviously necessary at a university level, students need to test themselves to be sure they are grasping the subject, but I've seen too many teachers that just pour it on, particularly in cases where the class as a whole fared poorly on a test.
Third, take your students seriously. Even a seemingly stupid question might just be a tiny roadblock to a student's understanding and in most cases, it is a question others were afraid to ask. Bonus points for you if you can see deeper into questions into how your students are viewing the subject. The classic answering a question with a question technique can help draw everyone into the subject. Be honest about the limits of your understanding and push your students to push you.
Fourth, and perhaps most important, work on getting better all the time. Nobody's perfect, you should be learning as much as your students are learning. Teaching is not something you walk off the street and are great at, you should continually be learning what works and improving your methods. Never belittle a student, they can overreact to the smallest things.
In the end I suppose, if you are enjoying the experience your students will hopefully be enjoying it as well.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 30 2014, @06:01AM
I cannot put enough emphasis on this: love what you're teaching.
Don't be dry and dull, don't recite. Numbers and calculations are for books and tutorials. You're there to generate a level of understanding in the students.
Throw in silly little jokes, if they help keep attention. ("So if you produce sufficient numbers of these bats, the number of Wom players who buy them ... geddit? Wom bats? Anyway, the number...")
Keep looking at your audience. If they seem bored, you're probably doing something really wrong. Don't use a monotone, but you don't need to be that nerdy kid from the Simpsons. Don't talk at a regular pace, either - break it up, ask questions. Sometimes, give chocolate marshmallow fish out as a reward for questions.
Something else I wish I had, while studying maths (my learning disability makes things a bit difficult at times):
if you're teaching, say, derivatives and integration, don't just teach the method. Explain what you might use the area under a curve for, but don't just stop there. I really can't remember the uses for it but explain why it gives you what you need.
In my Computer Science classes, I'd have all sorts of crap thrown at me, then in the labs I wouldn't get how the specifics of it related to the lectures. (Again, my learning disability.) Try and give examples. Be somewhat interactive, and try to work out what you're actually being asked.
I had a Computer Graphics lecturer once explain to a class that if you could create a battery that would never lose its recharge capacity, you'd sell an unlimited number of them. One of my classmates pointed out that you wouldn't sell an unlimited number, because once everyone had what they needed they'd almost never replace them. The lecturer couldn't grasp what point was being made, and kept saying that you'd sell a limitless number. Don't make that mistake - it may not seem like much, but it demonstrates how much attention is being paid by the lecturer. He also disputed the Guiness record for the highest fall without a parachute.
I can't say this enough: love what you're teaching. Want to teach it to a class of people. They'll feel your passion. I've been inspired by a number of lecturers, including a Greek Mythology lecturer who was just a pleasure to turn up and listen to. The semester ended with him three weeks behind, my biggest disappointment being that class was over.
If you love what you do, your students will enjoy your lectures.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Thexalon on Thursday October 30 2014, @01:38PM
Some pointers:
1. Care deeply about what you are teaching, and know it intimately. That kind of passion and knowledge is contagious.
2. Care deeply about the success of your students in learning the material. (Don't worry so much about them getting good grades - if they really learn the material, the good grades will happen. If they don't, they deserve the grade they get as a result.)
3. If you get to the point where a student asks a question you don't know the answer to, the right answer is always either "I don't know that, so let's try to figure out a way to come up with a good answer." or "That's a really good question, but so far nobody else has been able to come up with a way of answering it. I'll help you find the current research on the subject."
4. Admit mistakes when you make them. One of the better math teachers I had in high school spent most of the class time doing the homework problems and having us students gleefully point out his mistakes - which was a great teaching device, because it meant we got really really good at spotting and correcting our own mistakes.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 2) by mendax on Thursday October 30 2014, @03:08AM
For me, my greatest teachers were great not because of what they were teaching in their classes but because of the other things I learned from them.
In high school, my Spanish teacher and Honors English teacher for one semester Dr. Werner (yes, he had a Ph.D.) taught me that it's okay to be eccentric and express to others the love of learning. He essentially taught me how to be human.
In grad school, there was Dr. Crowley who taught me how wonderful libraries are. However, it was a two-way relationship. He mentored me in libraries; I mentored him in the Internet at a time (1993-4) when it was not commonly known. I got to see the wonder on his face as he learned about all the possibilities that immediately occurred to him.
But I think the teachers I appreciate most are those who recognized my intelligence, that I was unlike nearly all the other kids in school, and allowed me to be myself. As many people here probably understand, it's hard to be the smart kid in school sometimes.
It's really quite a simple choice: Life, Death, or Los Angeles.
(Score: 2) by frojack on Thursday October 30 2014, @03:18AM
The Fine Article was scarcely interesting enough to warrant a post.
Silly gushing posts of favorite teachers that NOBODY ELSE KNOWS are perfectly tedious. A whole collection of them becomes utterly pointless.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 2) by mendax on Thursday October 30 2014, @03:48AM
Ok, how about a teacher that many people here know about, Dr. Carl Sagan.
Now, I never took a class with him and never met the man, but I watched the Cosmos miniseries in 1980 when it first aired and was influenced by what he had to say in ways that completely changed my life. The influence he had on me was as great as the teachers I had in school. He was as much a teacher to me as any of the others. And even though he's dead he still can teach me through his books and the DVD's of the miniseries.
It's really quite a simple choice: Life, Death, or Los Angeles.
(Score: 2) by microtodd on Thursday October 30 2014, @12:36PM
I must respectfully disagree. As a human being who is constantly trying to be nice to other people, and become a better person, I want to learn how to raise and teach my kids, mentor other co-workers, and so forth. Reading about other people's favorite teachers, and more importantly, why they are their favorite teachers, is very insightful and interesting to me.
But then again, I try to sincerely care about other people, listen to them, and learn from it.
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Thursday October 30 2014, @03:52PM
However, the list of almost-universally-known (amongst an SN-like crowd) people would probably be quite short.
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 3, Informative) by fadrian on Thursday October 30 2014, @03:20AM
The internet. It teachd me ul mi goood, speling nd grammaare.
Really? I have about seven, but I'll not embarrass the others (should they ever see this) by naming names. What did they do? They noticed me. They allowed and encouraged me to use my time to challenge myself rather than sticking to lesson plans and curricula, especially when they'd seen I'd already mastered the material that was in those. They pointed me in interesting directions. They let me challenge them when it was warranted. And for that last one, I'll give a brief overview of one of my seven...
I went to school back in the old days in a rural community. To say that we ran about five years behind the rest of the world was giving us about twenty years too much credit. So there I am in 1973 and I need one more class in "Social Sciences" to have enough credits to get into college. My (extremely) small high school had one more class in that area that was available to me, a class called "Problems in Democracy" that somehow crept in from the 1950's anti-Communist days. Taught by one Joe Wartick, a lifelong Republican of the Bircher variety, it normally consisted of warnings about the dreaded international Communist conspiracy and pointing out how America was a shining beacon on the hill, and so on and so forth. If I were going to have to take this Neanderthal's class, I was at least going to have some fun. So I listened to what he was saying and brought in counter-examples, I brought in every fact that the other side brought to bear and there were days that it seemed as though he and I were going to come to blows. Classmates told me I got veins to stand out on the back of his neck. A lesser teacher might have kicked me out or at least told me to shut up. He engaged me. My papers were carefully corrected in the logic of their arguments. I didn't get A's in that class (I didn't get A's in quite a few of my classes), but I did get a fair B. I learned how to craft arguments. We both got a chance to sharpen our ideological knives. In the end, I got the credit and out of his class. However, while I was in that class, I was also working as an orderly at the local nursing home. Joe's dad was in the home, very old and in that living dead kind of state where you're not sure where their mind is because their body doesn't work well enough to tell any more, bedfast, the body wracked with muscle contractions, and all you're really trying to do is prevent bedsores, keep them comfortable, and wait for the inevitable, and you wonder if the laws against assisted suicide are simply there to make sure institutions like these keep getting their expected Medicare payments for as long as possible... Well, anyway, I helped take care of him. Joe came and visited his dad every week on Sunday evening. One week he didn't come. Monday, after class, he pulled me aside and asked me how his dad was doing. I reported to him that his dad was about the same. He was satisfied, but the fact that he asked me also taught me something about trust and responsibility. Last I heard (about twenty years ago) Joe himself was living in that same nursing home, teaching me that old age and decrepitude come to all of us (if we're lucky). By now, he may have shuffled off this mortal coil. And, in the end, I remember him fondly, even though I loathe his politics to this day.
That is all.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 30 2014, @03:59AM
Jesus.
What he taught:
That what you think matters too (still relevant if not more so in an age of virtual worlds and brain computer interfaces):
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sermon_on_the_Mount [wikipedia.org]
https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Matthew+5 [biblegateway.com]
His new commandment:
https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=John+13:34-35 [biblegateway.com]
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Thursday October 30 2014, @06:04PM
Jesus.
What he taught:
Well his curriculum was good and his delivery was excellent. Unfortunately, 90% of his student don't retain the material.
3/5 stars.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 30 2014, @08:14PM
Given all the "miracles" attributed to that character, you would think that legit historians who were his contemporaries would have mentioned some of that incredible stuff in their works.
Didn't happen. Logical conclusion: fictional accounts.
It wasn't until 94CE, some 60 years after his execution, that that individual got a passing mention by a legit historian. [google.com]
It should also be noted that "Jesus" was a common name at the time.
Reza Aslan, the same modern historian who cites that bit, has done interesting work about the generally-understood meaning of "messiah" and how the PR image of that guy was crafted.
You can hear a good bit of that in this webcast. [kpfk.org]
It's a 14MB MP3 and will be in that archive until Dec. 7, 2014.
(There is a 6-minute news segment early in the file and the last 20 minutes is fund drive stuff.)
-- gewg_
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday October 31 2014, @02:12AM
Given all the "miracles" attributed to that character, you would think that legit historians who were his contemporaries would have mentioned some of that incredible stuff in their works.
There were lots of messiahs and cults during that time and I bet they all performed a growing list of miracles each time their story was retold. I think what made Jesus so famous was first his planning for after his death (real death not the "rose from the dead" crucifixion) which enabled his followers to stay organized, unified, and continue to grow, and the considerable efforts of Paul the Apostle, one of the most remarkable religious evangelists of history. Paul apparently was responsible for turning a local Jewish cult into an inclusive, cosmopolitan religion with reach throughout the Roman empire as well as organizing the first formal churches (particularly the Roman Catholic Church of the medieval age).
(Score: 3, Interesting) by aristarchus on Thursday October 30 2014, @05:34AM
unlike Socrates, they toiled in anonymity.
Socrates would have toiled in anonymity, had it not been for Plato, his student, that kept the dream alive in his dialogues. Great teachers are not great themselves, only if they are blessed with even greater students. And I just want to say, the worst teacher I ever had taught me more than the best "educational reformer" out there! Those who can do, do. Those who cannot, teach. And those who cannot teach, go into administration. And those who cannot administrate run for elected office. And those who cannot get elected become educational reformers! (Or they develop systemd!)
(Score: 2) by CRCulver on Thursday October 30 2014, @07:04AM
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Thursday October 30 2014, @03:35PM
Socrates was actually a bit of a celebrity in Athens in his time (indeed, one of the motivations for trying him was that his accusers wanted the political points gained by taking him down, sort of like how prosecutors enjoyed going after Michael Jackson). When Aristophanes wrote The Clouds he was continuing a trend of lampooning notable people who were in the audience (he also regularly mocked Athenian politicians, who would have been in the front row at the time) - like Jon Stewart, if nobody knew who Socrates was, nobody would have gotten the joke. Another fun fact: Socrates had fought in several battles for Athens, and acquitted himself rather well, which was one reason people respected him.
There were others who wrote about him too.
We also owe a lot of our knowledge about any of these guys to those who made efforts to preserve the documents about it: First the Byzantines, and then the Muslims kept and copied it all down when documents from the Roman Empire were constantly getting lost or destroyed in Western Europe.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.