People who are good at stuff are not always good at teaching that stuff to others. Often, in fact, as someone becomes an expert at something, they have trouble viewing the first steps from the metaphorical seventh floor landing.
Try reaching a four-year-old to read “cat” or what 2+2 is and you’ll realize that things that you “just do” are actually a series of difficult steps for a beginner. In much the same way, experts “just do” play an instrument, play a sport, solve an equation, or create art.
Some of the worst teachers I ever had were geniuses, but they had trouble getting into the minds of their students, much like the xkcd comic (“silicate chemistry is second nature to us…”). Teaching is a skill; in fact, it’s a dozen skills stacked on top of each other. Thank your local educator today: the current administration continues to underfund education and the current society underappreciates teaching as a skill (and I haven’t even touched on the classroom management, lesson planning, and social skills required by most educators).
Tags by @boppinrobin
#a principal once told me he’d hire a veteran kindergarten teacher over a person with a doctorate in a subject any day#because the kindergarten teacher would understand how to break tasks down into simple language and easy-to-follow steps#it totally inspired me to respect my own skills as an early childhood teacher and to this day I take great pleasure in helping others out#of all ages to do complicated things and understand complicated topics
I totally get that statement. Looking back to university the most frustrating lectures were by geniuses in their field who weren't even mean or anything, but they were explaining 6D chess to me when I was trying to understand where the chess pieces can move.
On the other hand those that focused on the basics, then one step further, then one step further were much easier to follow and the material was less frustrating to dig into.
And a consequence of this in academia is that people who are good at teaching often get dismissed by their peers and superiors rather than recognized for their skills, especially if they are at all marginalized.
It sounds paradoxical written like that, sure. But how many times have you seen this happen:
1. Marginalized person clearly and concisely explains a difficult concept to a wide audience. Response: Audience thinks the concept is inherently easy to grasp, because they understood it quickly.
2. More privileged person poorly explains a medium- to low-complexity concept to the same audience. Response: Audience thinks the person must be very smart, because the concept seems difficult to grasp.
In both cases, the audience is judging complexity based on how well they understood the concept, but the conclusion they draw about why they understood it is impacted by the social privilege of the speaker. Success is attributed to something outside of the marginalized person; failure is attributed to something outside of the privileged person.
Combine this with the fact that marginalized people are more likely to be teachers and you wind up with a vast devaluation of educational skills.
Funnily enough that tracks 1:1 with those lectures. The "genius" was a man and the person who finally explained it concisely was a woman.
And from what I've heard my male peers always evaluated the female lecturers more harshly, which I can only attribute to misogyny.
