I read a long book review of a book by Doug Lemov entitled Teach Like a Champion, in the New York Times. While the apparent reported premise of the book – that good teachers can be "made" as opposed to it being something that is innate – resonated with me deeply, I came away from the review feeling a bit annoyed with the both the reviewer and the book's author.
That's because instead of coming out and explaining the details of Lemov's thinking about how one becomes a better teacher, or how one can be taught to be a better teacher, the review only serves to "tease" the content of the book. The reviewer is obviously a Lemov "fan," and she's just cheerleading without really contributing to an intelligent discourse about teacher education. Basically, the message of the review is: buy this book, and you'll get the secret to becoming a better teacher.
Knowledge like that shouldn't be proprietary. But setting aside philosophical/ethical quibbles, I also suspect that knowledge of that sort can't be proprietary – by which I mean that it's not going to help improve education as long as it remains proprietary, when looked at from a cultural practices / knowledge systems angle. Where good educators come from and how they're made, if they can be made, is not the sort of information you can or should hide behind a "for only $16.77!" barrier (current price on Amazon). Lemov (and possibly the reviewer) may wish to revolutionize education in America, but I doubt they'll make much progress until they lose the mercenary attitude. Is that too idealistic of me?
I have had consistently bad experiences with knowledge that hides behind "buy this book" barriers – I'm thinking mostly of the infinite number of self-help manuals that circulate in the world, but my experience with Rosetta Stone language-learning software is also a recent, and expensive, example. I have begun to develop the belief that "good" knowledge (by which I mean truly revolutionary and/or useful knowledge) must, by definition, be "open source" in some sense of the term.
So getting back to the idea that good teachers can be made, instead of found, I guess my thinking is that I agree, and I think the idea could be revolutionary for teacher training, but for now I'll continue looking at my own insights, and keep searching blogs and other online content, and keep reading less promotion-reliant tomes.