Caveat: Coda to Yesterday’s Post

Just as I was pondering what in the world to write on today's blog post, my friend Peter (who is currently on a whirlwind return to the US but will be back in a week or so) posted a huge, deeply-thought-out response to my post from yesterday, about the debate topic of whether teachers should teach specific knowledge vs teach self-confidence. I actually agree completely with what he wrote (you can go read what he wrote [broken link! FIXME] here, appended to my blog-post).

When I wrote what I wrote, yesterday, I was very focused on the "other side" of the debate question: the alternative offered by the textbook, in the way it formulates the question, to teaching "specific knowledge," is instead to teach "self-confidence," and my point was that I was becoming more inclined to agree with my students that teachers do not need to be in the business of teaching self-confidence. 

The mistake, of course, is to see these as the only two possible options: we either have to teach "specific knowledge" or we have to teach "self-confidence."

Obviously, there are other choices. Peter includes some "third ways" in his discussion: we can teach curiosity, or teach analytical thinking. My arguably most-talented coworker, "Anne-teacher," has the best answer, maybe: I long ago realized she does not, in fact, teach English at all. She shows her students "how to study." Her students always excel on those Korean exams – far more so than my students, who are learning from me something I rather naively and optimistically refer to as "English," or Curt's students, who are learning from him a topic that could best be characterized as "English grammar as analyzed ad infinitum - but done so entirely using the Korean Language." 

[daily log: walking, 6 km]

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