Teaching Kids to Walk and Talk 25

Teaching Kids to Walk and Talk 25 It is important, when teaching Socratically, which is my preferred methodology, to make students question their beliefs. No one is a bet- ter teacher than a teacher who makes students wonder whether he has been wrong about something. Do I think that teachers should lie to students? I think teachers should make students think harder than they might have been capable of doing without the teachers. I also think that teachers should not tell answers to students. Students do not learn from memorizing answers. They learn from developing questions for themselves that they then can begin to find answers to. | believe that effective teaching makes .. . students develop questions to which they then will seek answers students look for answers from people other than the teacher students confused and less certain than they were before Now, I realize that these are pretty nonstandard ideas. That is, of course, the point. This next writer worked for me (after getting his Ph.D. elsewhere) in the academic world and later in the business world. Probably the most important lesson I learned from you was the value of overstatement and oversimplification in communicating ideas and getting people’s attention. I recently retired and was roasted at my retirement party by a group of longtime employees and there were some interesting anecdotes about what I’d taught them about selling their ideas through management. Software engineers are often uncomfortable making a point without giving every possible nuance, caveat, and detail. This typically causes management’s eyes to gloss over and their ideas never get a fair hearing. So, I’ve (apparently relentlessly) encouraged employees to make their points quickly and to use overstatement and oversimplification as rhetorical devices. I’m still wincing over the roasts that portrayed my predilection for interrupting presenters and asking, “What’s your point?”—I learned that one from you. HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_023771