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Only a beginner can teach a beginner. First you struggle. Then you think you know it all. Then you forget what was so hard. Then you master it. And then you rea

by z3t4 7y ago

Only a beginner can teach a beginner. First you struggle. Then you think you know it all. Then you forget what was so hard. Then you master it. And then you realize you know very little.

hammock 7y ago
"Sophomore" is a term for second-year students (not even halfway done) that means "wise fool" referring to how they're at a level where they think they're smarter than they are, and they don't yet know what they don't know.
- msla 7y ago
  Sadly, if an etymology seems clever, it's likely false: https://www.etymonline.com/word/sophomore https://www.etymonline.com/word/sophomore > 1680s, "student in the second year of university study," literally "arguer," altered from sophumer (1650s, from sophume, archaic variant form of sophism), probably by influence of folk etymology derivation from Greek sophos "wise" + mōros "foolish, dull" (see moron). The original reference might be to the dialectic exercises that formed a large part of education in the middle years. At Oxford and Cambridge, a sophister (from sophist with spurious -er as in philosopher) was a second- or third-year student (what Americans would call a "junior" might be a senior sophister).
derefr 7y ago
And yet, oddly, sometimes mastery confers the inability to teach something, because most of what you now know, you never learned in association to a structured explanation, only in association to your own trained reflexes. People who learn a second language understand its grammar from the first stroke, since it’s taught along with the language. People who learn a first language recognize its grammar (i.e. they can tell you whether or not something is grammatical) but don’t understand it, because they picked the language up “naturally.” Often a master will come to a sophomore student and ask them to explain a concept to the juniors (after checking their explanation for not having any faults the master can find), because a usual master’s explanation (presuming the master isn’t also a master of education) is far less useful to a junior’s understanding than a sophomore’s is. The master is aware of nuances that greatly affect the end result, but aren’t so relevant at first; while the sophomore is aware mostly of things in the order they’ve managed to absorb them so far—which likely reflects the order of least-to-most difficult to absorb, and so reflects the things the juniors would be most likely to be struggling with.
- wpietri 7y ago
  Is that odd? I think of teaching something as a separate skill. As you say, teaching is about helping a student where they are. Mastering topic X doesn't convey knowledge of how students A, B, and C each relate to topic X.
- grawprog 7y ago
  >And yet, oddly, sometimes mastery confers the inability to teach something, because most of what you now know, you never learned in association to a structured explanation, only in association to your own trained reflexes. A friend of mine once told me something that stuck with me, truly mastering something isn't the ability to do it well yourself, it's the ability to pass on the knowledge to others. Having taught before I agree. You never realize how little you understand the details of things until you try to teach someone else, and once you become cognizant of the details you forgot while learning enough to teach them to someone else, while retaining your skills and muscle memory, I feel like you can begin to call yourself a master.

by z3t4 7y ago

Only a beginner can teach a beginner. First you struggle. Then you think you know it all. Then you forget what was so hard. Then you master it. And then you realize you know very little.

hammock 7y ago

"Sophomore" is a term for second-year students (not even halfway done) that means "wise fool" referring to how they're at a level where they think they're smarter than they are, and they don't yet know what they don't know.

msla 7y ago
Sadly, if an etymology seems clever, it's likely false: https://www.etymonline.com/word/sophomore https://www.etymonline.com/word/sophomore > 1680s, "student in the second year of university study," literally "arguer," altered from sophumer (1650s, from sophume, archaic variant form of sophism), probably by influence of folk etymology derivation from Greek sophos "wise" + mōros "foolish, dull" (see moron). The original reference might be to the dialectic exercises that formed a large part of education in the middle years. At Oxford and Cambridge, a sophister (from sophist with spurious -er as in philosopher) was a second- or third-year student (what Americans would call a "junior" might be a senior sophister).

derefr 7y ago

And yet, oddly, sometimes mastery confers the inability to teach something, because most of what you now know, you never learned in association to a structured explanation, only in association to your own trained reflexes. People who learn a second language understand its grammar from the first stroke, since it’s taught along with the language. People who learn a first language recognize its grammar (i.e. they can tell you whether or not something is grammatical) but don’t understand it, because they picked the language up “naturally.” Often a master will come to a sophomore student and ask them to explain a concept to the juniors (after checking their explanation for not having any faults the master can find), because a usual master’s explanation (presuming the master isn’t also a master of education) is far less useful to a junior’s understanding than a sophomore’s is. The master is aware of nuances that greatly affect the end result, but aren’t so relevant at first; while the sophomore is aware mostly of things in the order they’ve managed to absorb them so far—which likely reflects the order of least-to-most difficult to absorb, and so reflects the things the juniors would be most likely to be struggling with.

wpietri 7y ago
Is that odd? I think of teaching something as a separate skill. As you say, teaching is about helping a student where they are. Mastering topic X doesn't convey knowledge of how students A, B, and C each relate to topic X.
grawprog 7y ago
>And yet, oddly, sometimes mastery confers the inability to teach something, because most of what you now know, you never learned in association to a structured explanation, only in association to your own trained reflexes. A friend of mine once told me something that stuck with me, truly mastering something isn't the ability to do it well yourself, it's the ability to pass on the knowledge to others. Having taught before I agree. You never realize how little you understand the details of things until you try to teach someone else, and once you become cognizant of the details you forgot while learning enough to teach them to someone else, while retaining your skills and muscle memory, I feel like you can begin to call yourself a master.