What is it that Bill Gates did not understand about education?
I was reading this interview of Bill Gates explaining what he understood after all those efforts for education, and I was surprised to see that he did not understand the most important, hoping that some magical dissertation, that so far mysteriously was not written by anyone in the world, will provide the precious answers…
What is it that Bill Gates did not understand and needs to know? In his own words: ‘What is it about a great teacher? Is it their ability to calm down the classroom or to make the subject interesting? Do they give good problems and understand confusion? Are they good with kids who are behind? Are they good with kids who are ahead?”
Obviously Bill did not ever have a good teacher himself, otherwise he would have known first hand what is it that makes a good teacher.
Unfortunately the qualities of a good teacher can not be produced by any mechanism at all, there can not be any institute, school or method able for mass production of good teachers.
In the chapter of education Bill’s book is very disappointing, missing even common sense points.
Bill should underestimate less first of all his own nation. After centuries of an admirable intellectual life, his fellow Americans should have become able to produce good teachers. But they have not, because it is impossible.
Beyond what a mechanism can produce, all the knowledge and skills that can be learned, there is just one quality that makes a good teacher, which can not be taught, the quality of being absorbed by the subject that you teach, ready to risk your life for the subject that you teach, ready to make sacrifices, to teach even without being paid, etc.
This simple and most rare quality is immediately understood even by mediocre students, which explains why good teachers succeed not only when they teach their younger likes, but even persons with lower demands.
Most of the students, unless they are decided to ignore all intellectual life and live like stones or plants, when they are with a teacher of that kind, somehow in various degrees are fascinated and realise that the subjects this teacher speaks about are really interesting and worthy for a person to ponder.
I appreciate Bill Gates’ good intentions and work, as any visitor of these pages knows, but in the subject of education he misses even elementary knowledge, available and existing for a long long time…
A question follows naturally I guess: is there anything real we can do about education, or maybe we’d better sit back and do nothing? We’ll think about that on another post.
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