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Great teachers don't need iPads, what matters is quality of teaching
By Fernando Bensuaski |
July 27, 2011, Wednesday
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IN the warm, placid afternoons so common in the temperate zones along the South Atlantic, we would cross the small campus of our science high school, carrying our books and our slide rules.
Although we had to practice sports and study the humanities, our real love was science - 99 percent of us would go on to study science in university - and we all were required to have a slide rule.
In the pre-computer age, the device allowed the user to make logarithmic and geometric calculations much faster than long-hand. The slide rules were still in full use when the Boeing 747 and America's Apollo moon mission craft were designed.
To a scientist and a science student, a slide rule was as necessary as food. Those who could not afford much would still carry in their shirt pockets a 15-cm plastic slide rule with nominal accuracy, but it served the purpose. Up the affordability scale were larger, better-quality, more accurate models. Those who could afford would walk around campus carrying the wonderful, 30-cm Aristo Hyperlog. It was German-made, beautiful, pure white, with slick design, sharp corners, shining and boasting the best imaginable accuracy.
If Apple had been around, it would have been named the iRule. The slide rule was slowly replaced by Hewlett-Packard's scientific calculators; and those were replaced by more complex computers; and today we walk around the campus holding our tablets.
And if we can afford it, there's an iPad.
Our high school was among the nation's best as attested by the percentage that was admitted to university. In the seven years of middle and high school the teachers taught us and inspired us. Not one ever asked us to buy an iRule.
From iRule to iPad
Had they asked, suggested or even hinted, parents would have shown up at the main gate, ready to carry out a well-deserved lynching. The teachers themselves went for middle-of-the-road products that neither offended nor suffered deficiencies.
Several decades have elapsed between the iRule and the iPad; and even more importantly, nearly 25 decades, have elapsed between the days of Confucius and Socrates (contemporaries, of a sort) and our time.
The tools have changed, but the essence of teaching has not. In today's society, we must learn a trade, whether it be farming or medicine, car mechanics or engineering. But we will not be educated, unless our teachers go beyond lecturing and demanding high-priced, trendy equipment, and instill in us devotion to virtue and consideration for others.
Plato, Socrates' most famous student, wrote in The Republic that in the ideal state, education includes a harmonious balance of music for the mind and gymnastics for the body.
W.T.S. Thackara reminds us that music in Socrates' time had much wider significance than it has for us. It encompassed reading, writing, history, astronomy, poetry, dance, and music per se - in other words, the arts and sciences inspired by the Muses.
Society needs and should demand teachers who are competent, dedicated and skilled. But even more so, society should demand teachers who understand the mission of that noble profession: to awaken in the student the desire to learn and to instil in each student the moral compass that will guide the student through life.
Society needs men and women who understand that the role of a teacher goes beyond lecturing and the transmission of knowledge. It includes the molding and strengthening of the character of youth, and the offering of a role model of scholarship, humility and compassion.
Society needs teachers who, to paraphrase Thackara, help bring forth our innately human and divine qualities in an everyday, wonderful, and inspiring quest for all that is important and meaningful in life: wisdom, truth, goodness, beauty, justice, virtue, and friendship.
Society needs teachers who, as Plato described Socrates, are the midwife of our soul.
(Fernando Bensuaski is managing director of Goshawk Trading Strategies Ltd, Shanghai.)
Although we had to practice sports and study the humanities, our real love was science - 99 percent of us would go on to study science in university - and we all were required to have a slide rule.
In the pre-computer age, the device allowed the user to make logarithmic and geometric calculations much faster than long-hand. The slide rules were still in full use when the Boeing 747 and America's Apollo moon mission craft were designed.
To a scientist and a science student, a slide rule was as necessary as food. Those who could not afford much would still carry in their shirt pockets a 15-cm plastic slide rule with nominal accuracy, but it served the purpose. Up the affordability scale were larger, better-quality, more accurate models. Those who could afford would walk around campus carrying the wonderful, 30-cm Aristo Hyperlog. It was German-made, beautiful, pure white, with slick design, sharp corners, shining and boasting the best imaginable accuracy.
If Apple had been around, it would have been named the iRule. The slide rule was slowly replaced by Hewlett-Packard's scientific calculators; and those were replaced by more complex computers; and today we walk around the campus holding our tablets.
And if we can afford it, there's an iPad.
Our high school was among the nation's best as attested by the percentage that was admitted to university. In the seven years of middle and high school the teachers taught us and inspired us. Not one ever asked us to buy an iRule.
From iRule to iPad
Had they asked, suggested or even hinted, parents would have shown up at the main gate, ready to carry out a well-deserved lynching. The teachers themselves went for middle-of-the-road products that neither offended nor suffered deficiencies.
Several decades have elapsed between the iRule and the iPad; and even more importantly, nearly 25 decades, have elapsed between the days of Confucius and Socrates (contemporaries, of a sort) and our time.
The tools have changed, but the essence of teaching has not. In today's society, we must learn a trade, whether it be farming or medicine, car mechanics or engineering. But we will not be educated, unless our teachers go beyond lecturing and demanding high-priced, trendy equipment, and instill in us devotion to virtue and consideration for others.
Plato, Socrates' most famous student, wrote in The Republic that in the ideal state, education includes a harmonious balance of music for the mind and gymnastics for the body.
W.T.S. Thackara reminds us that music in Socrates' time had much wider significance than it has for us. It encompassed reading, writing, history, astronomy, poetry, dance, and music per se - in other words, the arts and sciences inspired by the Muses.
Society needs and should demand teachers who are competent, dedicated and skilled. But even more so, society should demand teachers who understand the mission of that noble profession: to awaken in the student the desire to learn and to instil in each student the moral compass that will guide the student through life.
Society needs men and women who understand that the role of a teacher goes beyond lecturing and the transmission of knowledge. It includes the molding and strengthening of the character of youth, and the offering of a role model of scholarship, humility and compassion.
Society needs teachers who, to paraphrase Thackara, help bring forth our innately human and divine qualities in an everyday, wonderful, and inspiring quest for all that is important and meaningful in life: wisdom, truth, goodness, beauty, justice, virtue, and friendship.
Society needs teachers who, as Plato described Socrates, are the midwife of our soul.
(Fernando Bensuaski is managing director of Goshawk Trading Strategies Ltd, Shanghai.)
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