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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

by 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.
- rnovak 11y ago
  Did you preface the teaching of St Augustine with the arguments you just made for it? (fun minutiae , deep meditation, example of great rhetoric), or did you just go "here, read this, it'll be on the exam"? In my experience, outside my core curriculum, lecturers never told me why I needed to know something. To me, the social sciences were about as fun to study as getting teeth-pulled, it was horrendous. To this day, I can't remember a single thing I read in college outside of science/math/engineering. Instead, it was just "here, read this, it'll be on the test". No build up, no explanation on how it's going to make my life better, just "your'e required to know this for the exam". Thanks, but no thanks. We are literally bombarded with new information constantly, if you really want me to learn it, please explain why it's important.
mkolodny 11y ago
I don't think objectivity and salesmanship are mutually exclusive. I've seen teachers make learning material really interesting without having to sacrifice neutrality. They simply make me care about the material - good or bad. OP seems to be encouraging teachers to "sell" the idea that the material they're teaching is important. If you don't make someone emotionally investing in learning the material, they'll forget 60% of it (on average). If you don't sell the material, it won't matter whether you were completely objective because students will forget most of what you taught them. I agree that it's really important for teachers to encourage critical thinking. I just think that it's possible for teachers to encourage critical thinking while still selling the fact that you should care about the material.
ssivark 11y ago
+1. Judicious use of sales technique definitely helps pitch the content better, but one can easily go overboard. IMHO, the analogy actually goes in the other direction, where one aspect of sales is trying to convey some information in an effective manner. Beyond that, sales is (often) partial in a manner antithetical to teaching (such as inducing a particular decision), whereas good teaching aims to induce enough engagement to make listeners think for themselves, and then help them along the way. When teaching (as in sales), there is definitely such a thing as overselling.
ddingus 11y ago
Very well stated. The techniques do overlap. I will make one point in favor of the author though, and that is the selling of ideas might be required for those who could benefit from them, but lack motivation or vision to see the implications. Used wisely, this is a tool to get people engaged. Once there, it's back to critical thinking, etc...

by pekk 11y ago

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.
rnovak 11y ago
Did you preface the teaching of St Augustine with the arguments you just made for it? (fun minutiae , deep meditation, example of great rhetoric), or did you just go "here, read this, it'll be on the exam"? In my experience, outside my core curriculum, lecturers never told me why I needed to know something. To me, the social sciences were about as fun to study as getting teeth-pulled, it was horrendous. To this day, I can't remember a single thing I read in college outside of science/math/engineering. Instead, it was just "here, read this, it'll be on the test". No build up, no explanation on how it's going to make my life better, just "your'e required to know this for the exam". Thanks, but no thanks. We are literally bombarded with new information constantly, if you really want me to learn it, please explain why it's important.

mkolodny 11y ago

I don't think objectivity and salesmanship are mutually exclusive. I've seen teachers make learning material really interesting without having to sacrifice neutrality. They simply make me care about the material - good or bad. OP seems to be encouraging teachers to "sell" the idea that the material they're teaching is important. If you don't make someone emotionally investing in learning the material, they'll forget 60% of it (on average). If you don't sell the material, it won't matter whether you were completely objective because students will forget most of what you taught them. I agree that it's really important for teachers to encourage critical thinking. I just think that it's possible for teachers to encourage critical thinking while still selling the fact that you should care about the material.

ssivark 11y ago

+1. Judicious use of sales technique definitely helps pitch the content better, but one can easily go overboard. IMHO, the analogy actually goes in the other direction, where one aspect of sales is trying to convey some information in an effective manner. Beyond that, sales is (often) partial in a manner antithetical to teaching (such as inducing a particular decision), whereas good teaching aims to induce enough engagement to make listeners think for themselves, and then help them along the way. When teaching (as in sales), there is definitely such a thing as overselling.

ddingus 11y ago

Very well stated. The techniques do overlap. I will make one point in favor of the author though, and that is the selling of ideas might be required for those who could benefit from them, but lack motivation or vision to see the implications. Used wisely, this is a tool to get people engaged. Once there, it's back to critical thinking, etc...