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 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