Wednesday, April 16, 2008

Do Teachers Really Learn From Their Students?

I had an older colleague who used to bristle at the old platitude "I learn so much from my students." He argued, "I had years of graduate training. I've been reading these texts for forty years. I know the secondary literature and all of the conversation around them. They are looking at these complex conversations for the first time and don't really understand the basics, much less the subtleties or the historical context. It is absurd to think they teach me anything."

Curmudgeon, but correct or misguided and misanthropic?