Inspiration: the key to teaching

After reading a recent comment to an entry, I feel a need to respond with yet another essay on inspiration, communication, and connectivity.

With few exceptions, we do not live and cannot live in a vacuum with a one way ticket to a psychology or to the pathology of self-understanding. If our prime directive is to serve our own inherent selfishness by expending great energy in reflection on who we are and who we choose to be, then it stands to reason we will be less inclined and certainly less successful at connecting to people. Obviously, however, as Shakespeare said, one must "know thyself" and "to thine own self be true," but it is that knowledge, unless it is entirely self-serving (apologies to the Randians, but I just cannot accept your premise in its entirety) which in turn makes a person more effective in dealing with others. This brings me back to teaching.

While I have spent my career in music and am now in college administration, I believe that successful teaching does require inspiration, at least in some form or another. Yet I also am utilitarian enough to recognize that inspiration cannot shine forth, indeed almost cannot occur, without certain elements behind it, namely knowledge, skill, and passion.

Football is an American pastime and a general favorite topic of conversation. I spend several minutes per week involved in some sort of football discussion with a friend or acquaintance. A discussion on football can take many slants including referee complaints (boring), injury descriptions (gruesome), pity for losers (shared sorrow), joy for winners (shared happiness), projections for the future (ignorance), and elation over particular plays or players (usually I just nod at these). Discussions often jump from high school through college and onward to professional level and result in some sort of bonding and shared experience by those involved (mostly men it seems). From these discussions I have learned many things about football, and while I don't have the skill (I was very bad at it), I do have quite a bit of knowledge gained primarily through osmosis. But, in truth, while a good football game is exciting and fun, and I will always remain a Cincinnati Bengals fan (they will come back strong someday), I don't really have a passion for the game. It occupies very little of my emotional attention. Therefore I have little to offer others in terms of inspiration of football, and this is actually fortunate since there is plenty of passion for the game already in the world.

Without skill but with knowledge, I might be able to impart certain principles and be a mildly effective football teacher, but my lack of passion would most likely result in uninspired teaching perhaps with negative consequences of uninspired performers, or to put it another way, a losing team. Conversely, then, it seems to me that inspired teaching must have skill in the discipline (maybe this is not essential but certainly to be valued), knowledge of the discipline, and a passionate belief in its role in education and culture at large.

When we think back on those teachers who made the most impact on our lives and taught us the most, we recognize several essential qualities or characteristics that cannot be denied. Those people knew their subject matter, they had the skills to support their knowledge, and they were passionately committed to communicating that knowledge to those willing to learn and to listen. Perhaps the truly outstanding ones had one other essential tenant that came shining forth to cause what we now called inspired teaching: those people had and have a love of people.

I was recently reminded of the need to love people when I overheard a student say to someone else, "Why don't you love people as much as you love music." The greatest teachers I know have skill, have knowledge, have passion, and they love people. For without that love, their abilities turn inward and lack the connectivity, the level of communication that is absolutely required for successful education. In fact, to take it another step, I would posture that love of people is essential for success in nearly (notice my careful disclaimer!) all disciplines that involve connectivity. Inspiration comes from passion of the discipline and great teaching becomes even better when accompanied with a love of people. So I continue to develop my skill, my knowledge, and my passion but never to substitute those things with the required ingredient for success, that is love of people.