# Signs of bad teaching

The role of teaching, like every other form of [power](power.md), draws many people who selfishly desire [social status](groups-small.md) or [specialized ability](jobs-specialization.md) to leverage elsewhere. A teacher's knowledge makes them inherently more [powerful](power.md) in their [understanding](mind-understanding.md) than the students (or, at least, they [appear](people-image-distortion.md) to be).

Most [educational institutions](groups-large.md), though, have no other measurement of a teacher's [influence](influence.md), so they revert to how *long* someone was an educator (i.e., tenure). For this reason, most of the promotion and advancement of a teacher's status comes through [political influence](influence.md) and merely existing in a role, rather than any comparatively universal standard of quality.

Further, the only thing necessary to perform a task well is to imitate the [traditions](habits.md), but knowing how to [master](mind-creativity.md) the tasks requires knowing *why* the traditions exist, so sufficiently teaching at scale can be mistaken for great teaching.

For this reason, many formal teaching institutions run the same risks of any other large-scale system that runs for decades, which makes most official education institutions [dysfunctional](mgmt-badsystems.md):

- Teachers in many schools are often required to teach the same curriculum to every group of students who arrive, meaning they effectively stop learning themselves unless they pursue their education *outside* the classroom.
- In their [hubris](morality-evil.md), many teachers desire to be right more than correct. They hamper the pursuit of the truth for their students.
- Some ideas are [self-created](creations.md), but teachers are frequently taught their ideas are worthless. They often hide behind [circuitous references to other sources](people-image-distortion.md) to avoid self-ownership.
- In a classroom, teachers possess legitimate [authority](power.md) to control the class, so a bad teacher can easily devolve into small-scale [tyranny](people-boundaries-why.md) if the administration gives them too much additional authority.
- Teachers will frequently hide how little they know with confusing [language](language.md) (e.g., Latin). It tends to impress the majority of the students, but more intelligent students often see right through it after some experience with it.
- Many teachers have plenty of [unresolved trauma](hardship-ptsd.md) that provokes them to insist heavily on [order](unknown.md) in their educational system, which insulates their [culture](people-culture.md) from the rest of the world. Without a reliable amount of [social risk](entrepreneur-why.md), they'll end up covering [trends](people-trends.md) that already passed and will impede a student's ability to apply the information they've learned more than if the student learned it themselves.
- If school standards start failing, school systems will often start drilling and training their students harder to compete with other schools.

[Writing](language-writing.md) formed by intelligent people can be complex, but bad teachers weaponize academic writing to make it inaccessible.

- Healthy intelligent writing slowly unveils truths, often with a consideration for [artistic conveyance](art.md) or to allow even unintelligent readers to slowly grasp a concept.
- Without an intent to [communicate](language-writing-messages.md), the information will be difficult to read, even for [very smart people](mind-neurodivergence.md).

APPLICATION: As a student struggling with a curriculum, it's very difficult to figure out which of the three non-exclusive conditions apply:

1. The teacher is giving a well-intended but insufficient expansion of some very difficult ideas.
2. That teacher is trying to explore new concepts while also trying to teach their students.
3. The teacher is pontificating and doesn't understand the topic, but they look important by making the subject needlessly complicated.

APPLICATION: A major risk for all [teachers](education.md) is that they will invariably teach their subject enough that they're not as effective as actually [doing anything](purpose.md) with what they have. The only solution is for them to teach less and do more, but then they wouldn't be [specialized enough](jobs-specialization.md) for anything.

APPLICATION: Any formalized education, including [college](jobs-college.md), risks exploring meaningless topics through an avalanche of information. The only solution exists *beyond* the educational system (e.g., getting a college degree to become a lawyer), and we find that motivation through [self-awareness](mind-awareness.md) and learning to simplify what we understand.

APPLICATION: Practice should always overshadow theory, but to their detriment, most formalized school systems believe the opposite.

The product of this is that popular education institutions work less like effective educational systems and more like factories.

APPLICATION: The classroom and the cubicle are detrimental to healthy learning. Great learning should be on-site, in the field, interactive, sporadic, and fun.

There aren't any bad students, though there *are* unwilling students. More often, there are many bad teachers who fail in a few possible ways:

- Failing to [inspire](influence.md) the student to *want* to learn. This is the most frequent failure, and comes from the teacher's unawareness of what the student [values](purpose.md) or *why* the information they're teaching is important. A little [sympathy](mind-feelings.md) and [self-reflection](mind-awareness.md) goes a *very* long way.
- Failing to communicate the information correctly. Typically, in this case, the teacher hasn't [created](creations.md) anything new, and is simply using someone else's works.
- Failing to apply the information correctly to make it useful, which comes from them not having a [passion](mind-feelings.md) about the subject.
- Filtering educational principles through a [political](politics-conservativeliberal.md) lens instead of letting [stories](stories-storytellers.md) represent themselves as raw information and [experiences](stories-storytellers.md). This can become [terrible](mgmt-badsystems.md) when it applies to highly practical domains (e.g., [science](science.md), [math](math.md)).

APPLICATION: If children were taught sports the way most teachers conduct their classroom:

- Until they were 12, they'd read about its technique and story, and occasionally find inspirational stories of great players of the game.
- They'd fill out quizzes periodically about the rules of the game.
- Under strict supervision, college undergraduates might be allowed to reproduce famous historic plays from the game.
- Only after a few years in graduate school, they'd finally be able to play a game.

APPLICATION: A great lecture is a *terrible* teaching method unless the student is a self-confident self-starter. The students will imagine their difficulty understanding the subject must be from their stupidity, since it couldn't have been from the lecturer's brilliance.

A bad educational system can be toxic to its students:

- Committing random information to memory without a desire behind it only [clutters](organization.md) the mind, and the only students who survive it have a strong [purpose](purpose.md) that sits *outside* that bad educational system.
- Many teachers simply make up grades.

APPLICATION: Fixing a bad teaching system is difficult, but possible:

- Give the teacher increasingly important roles that continue to [challenge](meaning.md) the teacher. Or, fire all the young teachers and only hire [old veterans](maturity.md) with applicable [industry-relevant experience](jobs-specialization.md). There must also be some sort of [risk](entrepreneur-why.md) for the teacher expressing bad information, or they'll develop and [propagate](people-conversation.md) bad [habits](habits.md).
- Consistently put teachers with other teachers of dramatically opposing views and [political values](politics-systems.md) (preferably co-teaching).
- Give the teachers the freedom (and expectation) to teach their self-generated ideas. If they only teach what other people have said or done, they don't [understand](mind-understanding.md) the material.
- Expose the teacher's classroom instruction to public scrutiny. If the public agrees or finds [meaning](meaning.md) in it, it's a good class. Otherwise, shut it down.
- Require the students to ask incessant questions about what they don't [know](mind-understanding.md). If the teacher has been speaking for 5 minutes or longer without a question, the class should be shut down. If the classroom is large enough to [scare](mind-feelings-fear.md) students from speaking up, split the class up.
- Introduce at least 1 new teacher every year from a non-teaching capacity, preferably [aging](maturity.md) [industry](jobs-specialization.md) professionals who want a more laid-back role than they were performing.
- If the students start failing, the teachers aren't covering the information well enough, and the school must either trim the curriculum or get new teachers.
- Ignore what other schools are doing. Ignore money-making activities that aren't central to the core curriculum and focus of the school (e.g., [sports teams](fun-sports.md)).

One of the most significant ways a school can become dysfunctional is through trying to specialize into too many roles at once:

- Teaching marketable skills for people to get [jobs](jobs-1_why.md).
- Informing students on [how to generally live life](https://adequate.life/habits/).
- Teaching [how to think](philosophy.md) and domains of [art](values-quality.md) and [culture](people-culture.md).
- Performing new research into new [scientific](science.md) domains.
- Running minor league [sports teams](fun-sports.md).

APPLICATION: If we trust others' understanding, we must mind the [culture](people-culture.md) that surrounds the people who understand something. Most experts spend so much time being [safe](safety.md) in their specific domain that they've experienced *many* unlikely circumstances and are [terrified](mind-feelings-fear.md) of those things happening (e.g., a doctor who [prescribes](body-health.md) an unhealthy treatment to stave off a horrific but unlikely illness, a [police officer](legal-safety.md) who fires a gun on someone rapidly reaching for their phone).