Memorable Teaching, By Lynn Stoddard
“People cannot learn by having information pressed into their brains. Knowledge has to be (pulled) into the brain, not pushed in. First, one must create a state of mind that craves knowledge, interest and wonder. You can teach only by creating an urge to know.”
The author of these words, Victor Weisskopf, was a world renowned Jewish scientist who escaped from Nazi Germany and helped develop the atomic bomb. He was known as a “memorable teacher.” He encouraged his physics students to ask questions by saying, “There is no such thing as a stupid question.” Weisskopf taught that it is by the use of questions that students pull information into their brains. He taught by creating an “urge to know.”
What is the difference between information that is pressed into a student’s brain and information that is pulled in? Is there a difference between required learning and self-chosen learning? Plato said, “Knowledge which is acquired under compulsion obtains no hold on the mind.”
Memorable teaching, in its purist form, may be the act of stimulating and enlarging something we were all born with — curiosity. This is reinforced by Christ’s words in the Bible, “Ask and it shall be given you; seek and ye shall find; knock and it shall be opened unto you.” We can interpret “ask,” “seek,” and “knock” as ascending levels of the “urge to know.”
What happens if students are taught math and reading, before they have a desire to know? According to research done by Peter Gray of Boston College and others, too early academic training results in long term intellectual and psychological damage.
Early failure experiences result in young children hating school and losing confidence in their ability to learn, a precursor for many to later drop out and become burdens to society — in and out of prison. Schools that are based on pressing a standardized curriculum into student’s minds may also be the root cause of becoming a loner, bullying and violence to others.
In later school years, required, assigned learning becomes shallow and temporary as students learn information to pass tests and discard it soon thereafter. It is becoming more and more evident that self-chosen knowledge, the kind that is “pulled in,” is the only kind that is deep and enduring.
Ever since the federal government started to take over public education and impose a curriculum to be pressed into student’s heads, it has become increasingly difficult for teachers to cultivate an “urge to know” and encourage students to ask questions. Memorable teaching, the kind that makes a positive difference in people’s lives, is rare.
If you are a concerned parent, legislator, school board member, teacher, administrator or student, ask for your freedom, as specified by the 10th Amendment, to develop a local school system that encourages and supports teachers to be the great, memorable people they want to be. You can also work at transforming yourself into a great teacher, holding up examples like Weisskopf, Einstein or Christ, the most memorable of them all. In so doing, you will make a difference in the lives of others and become memorable to them.
