UNC-Asheville
Two years ago James Banner and Harold Cannon published The Elements of Teaching, a humane and thoughtful book from which any teacher could profit. The companion volume reminds us of the utter interdependence of teaching and learning. All of us, even university faculty, are still learners unless we have stopped growing. More importantly, the advice given by Banner and Cannon, though it is about learning, implies some things about teaching which are worth reinforcing.
For instance, the admonition to admit ignorance, the advice to the student, "Don't kid yourself about what you know," and"Don't kid others about what you know": how handsomely that applies to the faculty member, often tempted to pretend to an infallibility that cannot exist. Again, the chapter on civility reminds us that there are various kinds of classroom incivility, and the professorial sarcasm may be as damaging as the back-row giggling. And I found this advice to learners, perhaps realistic but nevertheless a bit depressing: "Usually you must develop aspiration on your own. Few schools and colleges give high priority to fostering it, and most teachers and professors limit their responsibility to teaching you 'subjects' rather than approaches to life."
There is a section on how teachers should help learners, and it lists learning (teacher should know their subjects), authority, ethics, order, imagination, compassion, patience, character, and pleasure. That's a high order of accomplishment to aspire to.
The elements of learning outlined for the students are industry, enthusiasm, pleasure, curiosity, aspiration, imagination, self-discipline, civility, cooperation, honesty, and initiative.
I have been trying to think of what audience this book is going to reach. In a way it might be an appropriate textbook for a First Year Experience class; but it is weakened in that purpose by being aimed at students in secondary schools as well as college and I don't know how freshmen would like a book which spends so much time telling them what to expect from the kind of schooling they have already finished. I hope that there will indeed by a wide readership for this book, for its authors have wise and inspiring things to say about learning; and every student who can take to heart, and put to work, such advice as "we urge you to make being a student replace seeming to be a student if you are to benefit from your education" makes the university better and calls forth a higher effort from those of us who teach.
Merritt Moseley,
UNC-Asheville