Everyone is teachable

["Scott Farrington p375" <SFARRING@mail.lcc.whecn.edu>]

Perhaps this post comes a few days late, but I get kind of an uneasy 
feeling when I hear people say that everyone is teachable.

When I am at parties, people ask me what I do.  I tell them I teach 
writing.  They usually say, "Oh, I don't think writing can be 
taught."  I used to get mad at this statement, but then I realized 
that these people were right.  Now, when someone says that to me, I 
answer, "You are right.  Writing cannot be taught, but it can be 
_learned_."

I think the most important realization as a teacher is the 
realization that nothing you do results directly in a student's 
learning.  Learning is a personal excercise.  It is something a 
person must do for him or herself in a personaly way.  As we teach, 
we try to stimulate the learning response, but it is eventually only 
the student who can succeed in learning.

Too often, I think, we fall into the trap of thinking, "If I could 
just come up with the right technique, if I could just find the 
right words, I would be able to teach them."  This is a dangerous way 
of thinking, and it usually produces the opposite of the desired 
response.  No matter how many times you warn your child that the 
stove is hot, it is not until the child burns him or herself that he 
or she truly understands.  What we have to do is allow the child to 
learn, not beat the teaching it him or her.  It's what W.S. Merwin 
illustrates to perfection in his prose piece entitled "Brothers."

So, I suppose what I'm saying is that I don't think in terms of 
teaching them (whoever "they" are), but I think in terms of creating 
environments where it is easy to learn, where learning is 
comfortable, where learning is not feared.  I find that the less 
"teaching" I do, the better teacher I am.

For whatever it's worth,
Scott