Those Who Can't

I went to a college which believed that teachers should also be practitioners in their field, which meant that these poor bastard teachers had to pursue their professional careers while at the same time being teachers. It was hard on them, and I can't say that it was easy on the students, and probably not on the administration either. It's a noble ideal, I guess, and many institutions of learning believe in it to a greater or lesser extent. But I'm not sure it works well.

The old saying, of course (referenced it the title, obviously) is, "Those who can, do. Those who can't, teach." It's snide but not completely fair or true. Many people who have had excellent records in the doing department go on to rack up the points in the teaching department, and you don't have to be able to do in order to do, as I'm sure we've all discovered at one point or another. The saying reflects an opinion about teachers which isn't new, but certainly wasn't always the case.

Teachers are terribly important to education, especially our current system of it, and whatever my feelings on particular teachers, I do believe this to be true. If it weren't for teachers, the only education we would get would be from family and then as apprentices in our chosen trade. Not a particularly good lookout for higher education, that. So obviously it's important to have people who don't "do." Historically, people who have already "done" and have then turned to "teaching" have made excellent teachers, as have people specifically instructed in teaching.

We can quibble with that history, but therein lies my point: there is education that goes into becoming a teacher, at least a good one. It is not enough to simply be a practitioner in the field; that's mere apprenticeship, and for some things it works but for others it does not. Apprentices learn technique, whereas students can learn theory. So why the stigma on teachers as people who don't "do?"

Well, it comes mostly from the fact that teachers are, by and large, either lousy or not present, or both. The people who "can't" often do wind up teaching, because teaching is such a low-profile position that no actual doers want to sully their names with it. That's too bad. But actual doers are also at fault because they perpetuate the stereotype. Teaching is a form of retirement for some, sure, but why does it have to be a demotion or ignominy? Many great thinkers have been excellent teachers. The "can't" of the saying should be replaced by "don't." There is nothing that says that teachers can't, it is that they don't.

Or perhaps they shouldn't. It's too difficult to hold down two careers; the students inevitably get short shrift, or the teacher wears him or herself down to the bone and quits one or the other, either reinforcing the fact that they can't and teach, or that they can and therefore are better than teaching. Also, in the arts in particular, being an active practitioner in a field as subjective as art makes one biased in a way which is not appropriate for a teacher, and may make one have vicarious careers through one's students. More trouble.

But more than that, there aren't enough people who are actually skilled at teaching. The pendulum swings the other way and all doers go and teach, but without preparation. Simply doing something doesn't inform one of how to learn it, or how best to present it. It takes more than education in the subject to be a teacher; one must learn how to learn the subject as well.

In short, the best teachers I have had in certain avenues have not been practitioners as well. There is less personal stake in it, for one thing. Editors, for instance, make excellent teachers of literature because they know how to read, not because they know how to write. They can help people learn to analyze other work, and also critique student work from a non-biased standpoint. And they would be classified as "can't," just as critics, art historians, efficiency experts, and economists "can't" produce plays, create art, start businesses, or play the market, respectively.

In that last example, however, it must be noted that none of those people is automatically qualified to teach, any more than someone who knows nothing of the subject. In fact, another saying that I could close with is, "A good teacher can teach any subject." That's also not true, because there are basic understandings that many advanced topics require that all good teachers don't have. So let's draw a middle point between the two. If you don't know the subject, and you don't know how to teach, you are doomed to failure. Beyond that, as long as you don't get tenure (academic joke alert), you can try. After tenure, graduate students handle all of it for you, so make sure you get graduate students who know the subject and how to teach.

That joke just depressed me because it wasn't much of a joke and because it's true.