Who
was one of your best teachers? What made that teacher so good?
(Serendipity Bible 10th Anniversary Edition, page
1391).
I
was a student much in need of compassion. Learning and understanding
did not always come easy for me. Fortunately, over the years, I have
teachers who loved me. They realized that if I were to learn, I
would first need to get beyond the chore of learning to accepting its
passion. Then, they were generous in evaluating me. Giving me the
benefit of the doubt, when there was some cause for doubt. On the
other hand, the teachers I liked least were the martinets—those who
propagated form over substance—where formal education came to mean
abject submission to staid vacuity. The first need in education is
to stir up a passion for it leaving behind rote formality that simply
goes through the motions. As has been said, professors need to
profess vital convictions and thereby emerge through the web of
constraints constituting pedagogic lethargy.
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