Bad Teaching Technique
Jul. 28th, 2013 12:36 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
deaneI don't know how to swim. I can float on my back and move around a bit that way, I can dog-paddle until exhaustion takes me, and I can do a crawl so long as I hold my breath. But I cannot do a proper stroke that lets me breath while swimming, and I cannot tread water. On vacations I'll sometimes put on a PFD so that I can enjoy the water with my friends and there is often an offer from someone to teach me how to tread water. The instructions are always the same: move your hands in a figure eight motion and kick your legs like you're riding a bicycle. This has never worked for me: I end up figure eighting and bicycling my way to the bottom of the lake.
One time, while receiving this sort of instruction, I had my friend tread water while I dipped my head below to see the actual movements he was making. And lo! He was NOT moving his feet like riding a bicycle, but was kicking them out diagonally from his body in a way that would quickly get you in trouble on a bicycle. The sad thing about this was that my friend was a teacher, yet the best he could do was to repeat the same, inadequate description, despite the fact that it was clearly not working for me.
Fast forward to today. The paramour and I were out looking at small used power boat that we were thinking of buying. The boat came with an old, large-ish outboard motor which you started with a pull-cord. I've never tried to start any kind of motor with a pull cord before, not even a gas lawn mower. When the owner of the boat told me to start it up I pulled the cord out about half a meter, but nothing happened.
"You have to pull it," the owner told me.
Um, okay, I was pulling it, but I pulled it a couple more times, still to no effect.
"You have to pull it," the owner repeated unhelpfully.
"I think the cord comes out further than that," the paramour ventured.
Aha! Some useful advice. I tried extending my arm further the next time and indeed, after a bit of resistance, the cord came out further. Alas, the motor still didn't start.
"You have to PULL it", the owner repeating, somehow thinking that by emphasizing the word "pull" he was providing effective feedback on my technique.
I tried again but still no luck, so I asked the owner to demonstrate. He pulled the cord faster and harder than I had, giving it an extra hard jerk right near the end of the pull. With a bang the motor roared to life.
We ended up not buying the boat, but in chatting with the owner later we found out that he was, you guessed it, a teacher.
Einstein defined insanity as doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. I don't think that my would-be teachers in these two episodes were insane, but it does seem to me that if, as a teacher, you see that the student is not understanding the subject matter from your explanation of it, it would make sense to try a different approach rather than just simply repeating the same explanation and hoping for better results.
One time, while receiving this sort of instruction, I had my friend tread water while I dipped my head below to see the actual movements he was making. And lo! He was NOT moving his feet like riding a bicycle, but was kicking them out diagonally from his body in a way that would quickly get you in trouble on a bicycle. The sad thing about this was that my friend was a teacher, yet the best he could do was to repeat the same, inadequate description, despite the fact that it was clearly not working for me.
Fast forward to today. The paramour and I were out looking at small used power boat that we were thinking of buying. The boat came with an old, large-ish outboard motor which you started with a pull-cord. I've never tried to start any kind of motor with a pull cord before, not even a gas lawn mower. When the owner of the boat told me to start it up I pulled the cord out about half a meter, but nothing happened.
"You have to pull it," the owner told me.
Um, okay, I was pulling it, but I pulled it a couple more times, still to no effect.
"You have to pull it," the owner repeated unhelpfully.
"I think the cord comes out further than that," the paramour ventured.
Aha! Some useful advice. I tried extending my arm further the next time and indeed, after a bit of resistance, the cord came out further. Alas, the motor still didn't start.
"You have to PULL it", the owner repeating, somehow thinking that by emphasizing the word "pull" he was providing effective feedback on my technique.
I tried again but still no luck, so I asked the owner to demonstrate. He pulled the cord faster and harder than I had, giving it an extra hard jerk right near the end of the pull. With a bang the motor roared to life.
We ended up not buying the boat, but in chatting with the owner later we found out that he was, you guessed it, a teacher.
Einstein defined insanity as doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. I don't think that my would-be teachers in these two episodes were insane, but it does seem to me that if, as a teacher, you see that the student is not understanding the subject matter from your explanation of it, it would make sense to try a different approach rather than just simply repeating the same explanation and hoping for better results.
