Have you ever performed on stage or given a speech?
I began teaching in 1966 and continued until 2009. In those 43 years of academia, I performed on stage almost every day and gave speeches at least once or twice per class. I began as a top down teacher – I had all the knowledge, and I shared it with the individuals in the class room who had oh-so-much-less knowledge than me.

One morning, later in my career, I looked at myself when I was shaving. I looked deep into my own eyes and asked myself the vital question – “What are you teaching?” I looked at myself, razor in had. My mind was as blank as the look on my face, covered as it was with shaving soap. Then I awoke to a new world – I was not teaching a subject, I was teaching people, real, live human beings who were searching for knowledge, real knowledge, not just book knowledge.

Up until that point I had looked upon teaching in the same way as most of my colleagues did, filling empty heads with knowledge. As one of my old professors, in my first university back in the UK, once told us, after a senate house lunch swilled down with expensive sherry – “Knowledge is that which passes from my notes to your notes without ever passing through anybody’s head.”

That was the day I got down off the stage. I stopped giving speeches – aka lectures – and I asked the people in my class what they wanted to know. The answers surprised me. That was the day I began my teaching career, my real career, teaching people to become better learners, self-teachers, and hence better people. I stopped teaching my subject, and started teaching my students. I taught them how to teach themselves, how to assess the teaching material they were using, how to express themselves verbally and in writing, how to think critically for themselves, how to question everything, including me.

In short, I no longer taught them. I introduced them to Chaos Theory, how to teach themselves, how to assess their own work, how to develop the skills necessary for life-long learning, and how to love the pursuit of knowledge, for its own sake and for their own self-development.

The day I made that decision, I left the stage, retired as an actor and a speech maker, and became a teacher, a real, live teacher, of real, live human beings. It was one of the best days of my life. When I meet my former students, I realize that the stones I cast that day are still rippling round the universal pond of knowledge. Long may those ripples continue to enrich the world of teaching and learning.