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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) 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.
To be oneself, and unafraid whether right or wrong, is more admirable than the easy cowardice of surrender to conformity