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Quick poll: When you were in school, especially college, were the best teachers young or old? There are young teachers with talent, but in my opinion, the most
by etal 16y ago
Quick poll: When you were in school, especially college, were the best teachers young or old?
There are young teachers with talent, but in my opinion, the most outstanding lecturers were older and had a depth and variety of experience that the young ones couldn't match. Older teachers have the fabled 10,000 hours of deliberate practice to account for, as well as a diversity of experience and the time necessary to assemble some perspective on all of it.
So here's a big +1 for hiring adjunct professors from outside the usual pool of fresh young faces. Let the young people work, and the old people teach.
- HeyLaughingBoy 16y agoBoth (I think). When getting my master's the most interesting instructors were the about-to-retire grey hair teaching Software Project Management who had decades of PM war stories mostly from massive Government projects. At the other end was the young guy (looked like he was the youngest instructor in the program) teaching Introduction to Networks. He was absolutely amazing: there seemed to be nothing that he didn't know on any aspect of either circuit-switched or packet-switched networks! I think only once did he say "I'll have to research that and let you know next week." He was probably older than he looked since he'd worked quite a while at either Alcatel or Nortel.