The Best Teachers

The best teachers... sometimes discard or place less emphasis on traditional goals in favor of the capacity to comprehend, to use evidence to draw conclusions, to raise important questions, and to understand one’s thinking. In most disciplines, that means they emphasize comprehension, reasoning, and brilliant insights over memory, order punctuality, or the spick-and-span.

Spelling, the size of margins or fonts, and the style of footnotes and bibliographies are trivial in comparison to the power to think on paper; conceptual understanding of chemistry is more important than remembering individual details; the capacity to think about one’s thinking - to ponder metacognitively – and to correct it in progress is far more worthy than remembering any name, date, or number.

The ability to understand the principles and concepts in thinking critically through a problem outranks any capacity to reach the correct answer on any particular question. These teachers want their students to learn to use a wide range of information, ideas, and concepts logically and consistently to draw meaningful conclusions. They help their students achieve those levels by providing meaningful directions and exemplary feedback that quietly yet forcefully couple lofty ideals with firm confidence in what students can do – without making any judgments of their worth as human beings. Most significant, they help students shift their focus from making the grade to thinking about personal goals of development.

Ken Bain
What the Best College Teachers Do

What Can’t you Live Without?

Facebook is more important than having a flushing toilet. That’s the finding of a survey by London’s Science Museum. It asked 3,000 adults what things they couldn't live without. Facebook came in 5th while a toilet ranked 9th. The winner was sunshine, followed by being on the internet, clean drinking water and a refrigerator.

The tools of the digital made a strong showing. Email was 8th and possessing a mobile phone 10th. Google came in at 22, Ipods at 37, Computer spell-checks claimed the 41st spot and the last position went to Twitter. The Wii and Xbox made the list as well.

The point of the survey was to show that many people do not have access to fresh water.

The survey indicates just how much the essential things in life are taken for granted, such as water and fresh food, which so many millions struggle to find everyday to survive.

Another way to approach the question: If your house were about to burn down, what would you grab on your way out the door? And why?

See the complete list here.


Stephen Goforth