Teaching and expertise

Teachers pride themselves on being experts on education. Technically speaking, turning to the schools to dictate their views on schooling is very different from developing educational expertise. More importantly, we are seriously downplaying the role that children can play in their own educations.



Teachers do not earn a Master's degree by studying the students they will eventually have in class. They focus more on overall trends. It students weren't variable, this might not be too problematic. The bad news for teachers is that their students are all unique individuals.

A lot of teachers start a class by getting to know students. This is done through shallow exercises that are shared among an entire class. Most teachers take on the role of educational experts after less than an hour of knowing students. If you consider how little of that time is focused specifically on each student, we could be talking about maybe a couple minutes or less.

Imagine a class of 30 students with an hour getting to know the children. If things are 100% efficient and there is absolutely no discussion about the teacher or class, that would be just two minutes dedicated to each child. That's being generous. Realistically speaking, most teachers spend less than a minute for each child before acting as an expert on that child's needs.

Even beyond first introductions, teachers are limited in how much they know their students. In elementary school, teachers only have students for a single year. In higher grades, you have different teachers for different classes. Even if you have a teacher multiple years, they will spend less time with you.

By contrast, students have had their entire lives to get to know themselves. This includes plenty of opportunity to develop an understanding of how they learn and their unique set of educational needs. If children are doing their jobs, they will be their own educational experts.

This might help explain why teachers tend to be so anti-individual. Teachers are heavily invested in what they believe is expertise. The only way this expertise can be valid is if they know more than their students. Everything they study must be valid for every child.

Teachers push hard for conformity. Every student is expected to adapt to how their teachers teach. Ultimately, the biggest experts on how these students learn, the students themselves, have no say in their own educations. That is truly a shame.