Charles Dickens parodies (Hard Times 1854) the overly educated teacher who knows so many theories and facts that he cannot teach a class, naming him Mr. M'Choakumchild. "He and some one hundred and forty other schoolmasters, has been lately turned at the same time, in the same factory, on the same principles, like so many pianoforte legs.
"He had been put through an immense variety of paces, and had answered volumes of head-breaking questions. Orthography, etymology, syntax, and prosody, biography, astronomy, geography, and general cosmography, the sciences of compound proportion, algebra, land-surveying and levelling, coral music, and drawing from models, were all at the ends of his ten chilled fingers. . . .
"He knew all about all the Water Sheds of all the world (whatever they are), and all the histories of all the people, and all the names of all the rivers and mountains, and all the productions, manners, and customs of all the countries, and all their boundaries and bearings on the two-and-thirty points of the compass. . . .
"If he had only learnt a little less, how infinitely better he might have taught much more!"
Similarly, American school teachers with too many advanced degrees are too distant from their charges to teach well.
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I came across this quote a year ago when reading Dickens. I loved the parody, and it made me think about all the times teachers are expected to be repositories of knowledge. While I must admit I love being a know-it-all, it is fun to put aside what I know and become an empty repository so the kids in the room can add something meaningful. For example, once I was teaching a lesson on "The Lottery" - a short story I have read at least twenty times - and a story I have taught many times. But every time I teach it I find it is way more fun to offer crumbs to my student rather than me just filling them up with facts about the story. I think that Dickens means when he describes Mr. M'Choakumchild as being an infinitely better teacher "if he had only learnt a little less"! It is ironic that the more you learn, the more you have to empty yourself. Also, I think we forget as teachers that we were once our students and we had to learn on our own. It is a waste to take that experience away. Also, I can learn something new if I project the idea that I am a learner as well as a teacher. So here I go to teach "The Lottery" again - maybe I will learn something new.
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