9 ms·

Teaching is Selling

114 points by narpaldhillon 11y ago

djhn 11y ago
This is the almost the same idea as "Sell the why, not the what".
nekopa 11y ago
She could probably improve her method by adding some stuff from Gagne's Nine Steps of Instruction[0] Most of what she's doing I would say is not so much sales stuff, but hitting on important educational theory. For example: She starts with the idea of getting them interested in the topic, by choosing something they've encountered, and then telling an amusing anecdote. (That would be Gagne's step 1 and 2) She then goes on to presenting the new info, but it would be stronger if she did Gagne's step 3 - Ask for prior knowledge. That really cements the audience's trust in you and the topic when some co-participants share their similar amusing anecdotes. I have done this even in large conference settings, and I have always found at least one person brave enough to share their experiences... Add in a few more of the steps and you really do get effective learning. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_M._Gagn%C3%A9#Nine_steps_of_instruction https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_M._Gagn%C3%A9#Nine_step...
- acbart 11y ago
  It boggles my mind that I don't see more material about Instructional Design and the work done by Gagne in education discussions. These are extremely powerful theories with deep practical application, well-known in some disciplines. But CS Education heavily underutilizes them.
pekk 11y ago
This seems like a good way to teach about a product or tool (as you promote its use, or in other words, sell it). I can see such advice being useful on today's HN, which is full of people who need to sell tech. But really, teaching is not selling. The objectives are different. There may be some overlaps of technique, but it's easy to overstate that. It is correspondingly easy to take this advice much too far. For example, teaching which bundles exhortations and moral value judgements might help to improve recall, but it might also be misleading or intensely annoying, and might encourage teachers to suppress facts that don't match the intended emotion or message. When you're teaching, it's just unethical not to strive for some degree of objectivity and encouragement of critical thinking. I won't remark on what the ethics are for salesmen because that battle is unwinnable, but surely we can agree that teachers have certain professional obligations.
- benbreen 11y ago
  I have to agree. The distinction between "teaching" and "imparting information to achieve x goal" seems to be getting lost here. Teaching to me involves a give and take of some kind, some form of productive conversation or line of questioning rather than just inserting data into brains in a linear fashion. I did find the unapologetically mechanistic perspective here interesting though, since I just got done teaching St. Augustine ("City of God") to a class of very bright students at an Ivy League university. They hated it and I couldn't figure out why at first. To me its a treasure trove of fun minutiae about weird Roman deities, a deep meditation on why empires rise and fall, and an example of one of the greatest rhetoricians in history at the height of his powers. To them it was boring - even more boring than Aristotle's Nichomachean Ethics which I personally find dry as dust. The reason, it became apparent, was that St. Augustine was doing something similar to what this blog post outlines - following a didactic line of argument intended to dissuade potential disagreements rather than provoke them. (I personally don't see Augustine that way, but they did - in the words of a student, "it felt like a lecture and not a conversation.") Or, perhaps, they thought Augustine was selling his ideology rather than teaching it?
  - 6stringmerc 11y ago
    Slick write-up, and I especially appreciate your personal story and context to mull over. I studied Curriculum Design as my advanced degree program, have worked 5+ retail/sales/customer service jobs, and also done formal classroom instruction. I like that distinction you put forward, because it captures what I, well, disliked about sales as a profession. I love imparting knowledge, telling stories, and holding a person's interest - that is a transaction in and of itself. It's the end goal. What I had to do in sales was get to the very end of the discussion and then "ask for the sale" which always felt like a disservice to the relationship / exchange. As in, if I did well educating somebody that they needed to buy the movie Heat to test out their audio system, I shouldn't have to say, "So, are you going to purchase this today?" because they'll have already made the decision themselves. Sales is hard like that, and I can appreciate good sales techniques in both the soft and hard approaches. ...as to your story, it really reminded me of a write-up over at the AV Club on the second installment of the Atlas Shrugged independent movies. The film beats the audience over the head with dialog that only serves to advance the philosophy (or what have you) of the story, meaning it's really preachy and not very entertaining. I think there's a difference in audience expectations depending on subject matter, e.g. it's more acceptable to learn STEM material from a heavy handed teacher, but with personal belief systems/notions, lecturing creates push-back in many cases.
homonculus1 11y ago
I think it makes more sense to say that selling includes an element of teaching.
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
lvspiff 11y ago
This "teacher" notes this method works at conferences, but this is where all the attendees want your product. What happens in the classroom where there are those that couldn't care less about your product, you, or the subject you are trying to keep them engaged on? As another poster mentioned - she is hitting on some of Gagne's points but if she were to include the others she would be at instruction which is...teaching. Thus I could use any other profession and say something like "Engineering is teaching" and the fact that I gather materials is somehow going to translate into why every teacher should also be an engineer. The good/best teachers are not just salespeople, but also engineers, chemists, historians, philosophers, lawyers, and all sorts of other professions wrapped into one person teaching about a subject that not any one of those single professions covers.
anti-shill 11y ago
as a former teacher, I can tell you that good teachers are all about people skills...in fact, a deep knowledge of the curriculum might actually make one a worse teacher and not a better one...The more time you spend acquiring any sort of knowledge other than people skills knowledge is going to hurt you.
stillsut 11y ago
> this year in the Journal of Humanistic Mathematics points out that recreational math can be used to awaken mathematics-related “joy,” “satisfaction,” “excitement” and “curiosity” in students, ... In contrast, the Common Core in the United States does not explicitly mention this emotional side of the subject, regarding mathematics only as a tool. [0] [0]: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/12/opinion/the-importance-of-recreational-math.html http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/12/opinion/the-importance-of-...
crabasa 11y ago
I prefer to think that really great selling is teaching, not the other way around.
p0larboy 11y ago
This article is really useful. When i'm writing my web dev related articles, I'm always thinking what's the best way to allow my readers to digest my points better

114 points by narpaldhillon 11y ago

djhn 11y ago

This is the almost the same idea as "Sell the why, not the what".

She could probably improve her method by adding some stuff from Gagne's Nine Steps of Instruction[0] Most of what she's doing I would say is not so much sales stuff, but hitting on important educational theory. For example: She starts with the idea of getting them interested in the topic, by choosing something they've encountered, and then telling an amusing anecdote. (That would be Gagne's step 1 and 2) She then goes on to presenting the new info, but it would be stronger if she did Gagne's step 3 - Ask for prior knowledge. That really cements the audience's trust in you and the topic when some co-participants share their similar amusing anecdotes. I have done this even in large conference settings, and I have always found at least one person brave enough to share their experiences... Add in a few more of the steps and you really do get effective learning. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_M._Gagn%C3%A9#Nine_steps_of_instruction https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_M._Gagn%C3%A9#Nine_step...

acbart 11y ago
It boggles my mind that I don't see more material about Instructional Design and the work done by Gagne in education discussions. These are extremely powerful theories with deep practical application, well-known in some disciplines. But CS Education heavily underutilizes them.

pekk 11y ago

This seems like a good way to teach about a product or tool (as you promote its use, or in other words, sell it). I can see such advice being useful on today's HN, which is full of people who need to sell tech. But really, teaching is not selling. The objectives are different. There may be some overlaps of technique, but it's easy to overstate that. It is correspondingly easy to take this advice much too far. For example, teaching which bundles exhortations and moral value judgements might help to improve recall, but it might also be misleading or intensely annoying, and might encourage teachers to suppress facts that don't match the intended emotion or message. When you're teaching, it's just unethical not to strive for some degree of objectivity and encouragement of critical thinking. I won't remark on what the ethics are for salesmen because that battle is unwinnable, but surely we can agree that teachers have certain professional obligations.

benbreen 11y ago
I have to agree. The distinction between "teaching" and "imparting information to achieve x goal" seems to be getting lost here. Teaching to me involves a give and take of some kind, some form of productive conversation or line of questioning rather than just inserting data into brains in a linear fashion. I did find the unapologetically mechanistic perspective here interesting though, since I just got done teaching St. Augustine ("City of God") to a class of very bright students at an Ivy League university. They hated it and I couldn't figure out why at first. To me its a treasure trove of fun minutiae about weird Roman deities, a deep meditation on why empires rise and fall, and an example of one of the greatest rhetoricians in history at the height of his powers. To them it was boring - even more boring than Aristotle's Nichomachean Ethics which I personally find dry as dust. The reason, it became apparent, was that St. Augustine was doing something similar to what this blog post outlines - following a didactic line of argument intended to dissuade potential disagreements rather than provoke them. (I personally don't see Augustine that way, but they did - in the words of a student, "it felt like a lecture and not a conversation.") Or, perhaps, they thought Augustine was selling his ideology rather than teaching it?
- 6stringmerc 11y ago
  Slick write-up, and I especially appreciate your personal story and context to mull over. I studied Curriculum Design as my advanced degree program, have worked 5+ retail/sales/customer service jobs, and also done formal classroom instruction. I like that distinction you put forward, because it captures what I, well, disliked about sales as a profession. I love imparting knowledge, telling stories, and holding a person's interest - that is a transaction in and of itself. It's the end goal. What I had to do in sales was get to the very end of the discussion and then "ask for the sale" which always felt like a disservice to the relationship / exchange. As in, if I did well educating somebody that they needed to buy the movie Heat to test out their audio system, I shouldn't have to say, "So, are you going to purchase this today?" because they'll have already made the decision themselves. Sales is hard like that, and I can appreciate good sales techniques in both the soft and hard approaches. ...as to your story, it really reminded me of a write-up over at the AV Club on the second installment of the Atlas Shrugged independent movies. The film beats the audience over the head with dialog that only serves to advance the philosophy (or what have you) of the story, meaning it's really preachy and not very entertaining. I think there's a difference in audience expectations depending on subject matter, e.g. it's more acceptable to learn STEM material from a heavy handed teacher, but with personal belief systems/notions, lecturing creates push-back in many cases.

homonculus1 11y ago

I think it makes more sense to say that selling includes an element of teaching.

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

lvspiff 11y ago

This "teacher" notes this method works at conferences, but this is where all the attendees want your product. What happens in the classroom where there are those that couldn't care less about your product, you, or the subject you are trying to keep them engaged on? As another poster mentioned - she is hitting on some of Gagne's points but if she were to include the others she would be at instruction which is...teaching. Thus I could use any other profession and say something like "Engineering is teaching" and the fact that I gather materials is somehow going to translate into why every teacher should also be an engineer. The good/best teachers are not just salespeople, but also engineers, chemists, historians, philosophers, lawyers, and all sorts of other professions wrapped into one person teaching about a subject that not any one of those single professions covers.

anti-shill 11y ago

as a former teacher, I can tell you that good teachers are all about people skills...in fact, a deep knowledge of the curriculum might actually make one a worse teacher and not a better one...The more time you spend acquiring any sort of knowledge other than people skills knowledge is going to hurt you.

stillsut 11y ago

> this year in the Journal of Humanistic Mathematics points out that recreational math can be used to awaken mathematics-related “joy,” “satisfaction,” “excitement” and “curiosity” in students, ... In contrast, the Common Core in the United States does not explicitly mention this emotional side of the subject, regarding mathematics only as a tool. [0] [0]: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/12/opinion/the-importance-of-recreational-math.html http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/12/opinion/the-importance-of-...

crabasa 11y ago

I prefer to think that really great selling is teaching, not the other way around.

p0larboy 11y ago

This article is really useful. When i'm writing my web dev related articles, I'm always thinking what's the best way to allow my readers to digest my points better