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Saying that all experts are bad teachers is like saying all <insert ethnic group> are <insert stereotype>. Good teachers are good teachers. If the good teache

Saying that all experts are bad teachers is like saying all <insert ethnic group> are <insert stereotype>. Good teachers are good teachers. If the good teacher is an expert, then they are better than the good teacher who is not an expert, especially if they are trying to teach a nuanced topic. Does every teacher need to be an expert? Of course not. But plenty of non-expert teachers will actually lead students astray by teaching them the wrong model. I've had plenty of "bad teachers" who were experts. I've also had plenty of "bad teachers" who were not experts. I've had very few good teachers, period. Bad teachers in lower-level topics are not noticed very much, but they are the bane of undergraduates who are subjected to them often. Survivorship bias might lead me to conclude that most experts are bad teachers, but the better explanation is simply that teaching and being an expert in field X are distinct abilities/skills, and that it is rare to find people who have mastered both. I aim to be an expert in my fields (currently 3 disparate ones in which I hold degrees). I also aim to be a good teacher, which means that I take time to figure out the best approach and experiences for teaching a particular topic. I consider my expert status to be an advantage that complements my teaching ability. Being an expert does not make me a bad teacher. Being a bad teacher makes me a bad teacher.

Retric 10y ago
I don't think you can be a great teacher without being an expert or close to it. It's not so much content but knowing what to emphasize. Habit X: will kill you, will hurt, will cost time/money, will make you look like an idiot, will save time.
dack 10y ago
Maybe it should have been titled "why some experts think teaching is easy, and why they're wrong". As in, an expert might naively feel like they can teach a subject well simply because they know it well. However, the article shows why that intuition doesn't actually work. If, on the other hand, you want to put significant time into learning how to teach, then I imagine anyone can be a good teacher. I found the article itself fascinating, because I've gone through that experience myself. It may be obvious to some, but for me it was neat to hear that the realization I came to in my teaching is a common one amongst people who have spent lots of time learning and not a lot teaching.
msluyter 10y ago
Warning: anecdota. Having taught music and dancing at various points in my life, I've noticed that -- at least in these sorts of fields that require some sort of body mastery -- the best teachers often weren't the most naturally gifted. They often had to struggle and reason their way through issues in ways that the most gifted/natural musicians/dancers didn't. And because of that, they were often vastly superior teachers simply because they had learned how to think about and articulate a given subject. They could translate the wealth of techniques they had developed to learn the subject to others. And perhaps, having struggled themselves, they would be more patient. True, that's all ad hoc theorizing on my part, so I wouldn't promote that as some sort of universal truth, but it's something that I've heard from lots of musicians. (All of the above is tangential to the OP, btw, which I don't necessarily find that compelling.)
- lawpoop 10y ago
  That's what Carl Sagan said about his ability to communicate science information to his audiences. He had difficulty with the material, struggled through it, and found that be was more conscious of each step of the process, and could better explain it than his peers who got it naturally.
avn2109 10y ago
>> "Saying that all experts are bad teachers is like saying all <insert ethnic group> are <insert stereotype>." To be fair, the linked article makes exactly 0 claims about "all experts." Instead, the claims pertain to "experts," which could be fairly interpreted as "some experts" or even "a preponderance of experts." If the article meant "all experts" it surely would have said so. Neither the string "all experts" nor "every expert" appears in the linked article. I know my objection seems pedantic but I see this happen all the time, where someone makes a claim about e.g. "bicyclists do X" and then someone else gleefully and sanctimoniously jumps in with an objection like "How can you stereotype all cyclists like that, you are a terrible person!" When in fact the original claim explicitly did not pertain to "all cyclists" but rather merely to plural "cyclists." But now the claimer is super vilified as a cyclist-hater.
- sokoloff 10y ago
  I don't think "some experts" nor "plural cyclists" is the most reasonable interpretation. If I write "Black lives matter", it is not understood to mean that at least 2 lives matter (even though that's a perfectly valid, literal reading of the phrase).
  - corysama 10y ago
    You are arguing from extremes on both sides. A blog post is not a math PhD defense. Nor is it a formal systems proof. The words do not have one and only one possible interpretation. It is extremely common writing style to dedicate an article to "X does Y" when trying to talk about an interesting tendency or correlation. Unfortunately, it is also extremely common for people who work in formal systems to get an allergic reaction and feel compelled to point out that "X does Y" is not formally, literally, universally correct under all conceivable circumstances. This leads to distracting arguments that waste huge amounts of time that could have been spent discussing the interesting tendency/correlation and what to do about it. The proposed alternative is usually that the author should have peppered the article with caveats, exceptions, disclaimers and preferably citations of formally verified statistics. Again, this is not the Journal of Science. This is an opinion piece. Watering down every statement with disclaimers would be a distraction from the central point and would only serve to satisfy the allergies of a few highly formal readers.

Retric 10y ago

I don't think you can be a great teacher without being an expert or close to it. It's not so much content but knowing what to emphasize. Habit X: will kill you, will hurt, will cost time/money, will make you look like an idiot, will save time.

dack 10y ago

Maybe it should have been titled "why some experts think teaching is easy, and why they're wrong". As in, an expert might naively feel like they can teach a subject well simply because they know it well. However, the article shows why that intuition doesn't actually work. If, on the other hand, you want to put significant time into learning how to teach, then I imagine anyone can be a good teacher. I found the article itself fascinating, because I've gone through that experience myself. It may be obvious to some, but for me it was neat to hear that the realization I came to in my teaching is a common one amongst people who have spent lots of time learning and not a lot teaching.

msluyter 10y ago

Warning: anecdota. Having taught music and dancing at various points in my life, I've noticed that -- at least in these sorts of fields that require some sort of body mastery -- the best teachers often weren't the most naturally gifted. They often had to struggle and reason their way through issues in ways that the most gifted/natural musicians/dancers didn't. And because of that, they were often vastly superior teachers simply because they had learned how to think about and articulate a given subject. They could translate the wealth of techniques they had developed to learn the subject to others. And perhaps, having struggled themselves, they would be more patient. True, that's all ad hoc theorizing on my part, so I wouldn't promote that as some sort of universal truth, but it's something that I've heard from lots of musicians. (All of the above is tangential to the OP, btw, which I don't necessarily find that compelling.)

lawpoop 10y ago
That's what Carl Sagan said about his ability to communicate science information to his audiences. He had difficulty with the material, struggled through it, and found that be was more conscious of each step of the process, and could better explain it than his peers who got it naturally.

avn2109 10y ago

>> "Saying that all experts are bad teachers is like saying all <insert ethnic group> are <insert stereotype>." To be fair, the linked article makes exactly 0 claims about "all experts." Instead, the claims pertain to "experts," which could be fairly interpreted as "some experts" or even "a preponderance of experts." If the article meant "all experts" it surely would have said so. Neither the string "all experts" nor "every expert" appears in the linked article. I know my objection seems pedantic but I see this happen all the time, where someone makes a claim about e.g. "bicyclists do X" and then someone else gleefully and sanctimoniously jumps in with an objection like "How can you stereotype all cyclists like that, you are a terrible person!" When in fact the original claim explicitly did not pertain to "all cyclists" but rather merely to plural "cyclists." But now the claimer is super vilified as a cyclist-hater.

sokoloff 10y ago
I don't think "some experts" nor "plural cyclists" is the most reasonable interpretation. If I write "Black lives matter", it is not understood to mean that at least 2 lives matter (even though that's a perfectly valid, literal reading of the phrase).
- corysama 10y ago
  You are arguing from extremes on both sides. A blog post is not a math PhD defense. Nor is it a formal systems proof. The words do not have one and only one possible interpretation. It is extremely common writing style to dedicate an article to "X does Y" when trying to talk about an interesting tendency or correlation. Unfortunately, it is also extremely common for people who work in formal systems to get an allergic reaction and feel compelled to point out that "X does Y" is not formally, literally, universally correct under all conceivable circumstances. This leads to distracting arguments that waste huge amounts of time that could have been spent discussing the interesting tendency/correlation and what to do about it. The proposed alternative is usually that the author should have peppered the article with caveats, exceptions, disclaimers and preferably citations of formally verified statistics. Again, this is not the Journal of Science. This is an opinion piece. Watering down every statement with disclaimers would be a distraction from the central point and would only serve to satisfy the allergies of a few highly formal readers.