I have been thinking some more about engagement. Yesterday's post was clearly focused on what a teacher can do to make the sessions more engaging. What about the other party in that equation? If the students are completely disinterested, even the best teachers are eventually doomed to fail.
What then makes a great student? What are the ingredients?
I would start with curiosity. A student who has a genuine 'Why?' for every statement can engage a good teacher in a very interesting conversation. A conversation such as this can actually make the session interesting for the entire class.
The other trait would be drive. A drive to find things out for the joy of learning. A drive to build a working prototype for the joy of work. A drive to do well for the joy of a job well done.
As lamentable as the lack of good teachers in Indian academia is the lack of students with drive. Assignments are always seen as a necessary evil to be endured if one is to get a degree or diploma. It is not often that I meet students who jump into the assignment because it is a cool problem to solve.
We can go back and blame our education system I suppose where the teachers' apathy rubs off on the students early in their life. Where a job well done has no higher merit than a job gotten done with.
While I am not sure if curiosity can be injected into a person from outside, I do believe that drive can be instilled into a student. I have to echo Paul Graham's thoughts on this one. One of the traits of great teachers, he says, is that they had high standards and held their students to high standards. "Like three year olds testing their parents, students will test teachers to see if they can get away with low-quality work or bad behaviour. They won't respect the teachers who don't call them on it."
1 comment:
I so absolutely agree with that last line. In fact, I feel that's how newcomers to any pre-existing culture cultivate their behaviour. For instance, if new recruits join an office, they're engaged in this constant testing of authority to see what they can and can't get away with.
Also, on the good student idea itself, it makes a great difference as to whether a student's alone, or if he/she is in a classroom. There was this Moral and Political Philosophy course in college where I'd been a first bencher, curious and in a constant discussion with our professor. Guess who was isolated and called out for being the "teacher's pet". (
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