MY COMPUTER AS MY TEACHER

I enjoy reading the ideas and comments posted on Education Revolution, a Google discussion group. What I see is a large group of young enthusiastic teachers trying very hard to “know” how to teach, how to do it right, how to excel. On occasion, an “old gray beard” drops in a comment or two. This is one of those occasions.

In my travels around the world, primitive art as seen in market places fascinated me. The amazing thing about that art was always original and occasionally very good—not just good but very good. A common theme was that the artists often took a stump or a twisted branch of a tree, an odd shaped rock or piece of coral, and carved an interesting face or figure. In some cases, it took very little work but in others, it was obviously a daunting task to turn the raw material into a piece of art. The results were sometimes grotesque and other times beautiful but all interesting. This made me think of teaching. Maya Angelou once said something along the lines of, “If you learn, teach”. What she said takes on the air of being a rebuke for a person with teaching talents. If you have talent as a teacher, you are compelled do your thing.

Art and teaching seem to be innate talents. I think of teachers as artists; fame and fortune do not matter as much as they do for “normal” people. Unfortunately, they are sometimes not appreciated until after they have passed out of the picture or are dead.  Like an artist, a teacher can look at raw material, shape, and polish it, to turn it into something beautiful.  Being mindful of the fact that the earlier the teacher encounters them, the rougher, they are. Unlike artists looking at branches and rocks, teacher should never reject a student as not having utility.

As a college professor in a professional discipline, for the most part, my students had passed through the education filter and they were “shaped” into what they were. However, as a dyslectic student from the other side of the podium, I have vivid memories of all of my elementary school teachers; not just one or two, but all of them; rejecting me either by direct insult and ridicule, or by allowing me to set in the back of the room unnoticed. That should never happen in today’s world. They were not willing to pick up that knurled branch and shape it to something useful to society. I had to learn how to avoid being detected; to hide my inability to spell a word correctly or put the subject after the predicate or put the last sentence in a paragraph first, or the last paragraph first in a story, which is a story in its self. All I was was a blob of flesh interested in telling disinterested friends and parent about worms, frogs, and tadpoles.

The thing that shaped me happened after I was established as a college professor with a PhD. Much of the discussion in the Education Revolution group deals with technology in the classroom. Here, I am talking about technology both in and outside the classroom. For me the computer with MS Word with the spell and grammar check is a very patient always-present teacher. Spell check taught me that I do not have to know how to put letters in the right order. It knows I cannot learn how to “spell” and grammar check will not let me split infinitives.  It has yet to tell me I failed and that I can never go to college. It has never said I should forget about complex biology if I cannot even spell “veterinarian” with confidence. It never said I should not heed Maya Angelou’s admonition.  If I had a wish, it would be that teachers learn that a computer is more than extra-corporal memory; it can be a teacher too. 

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