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3/15/10

Teaching Is A Craft

I have said that I think teaching is less science and more art (craft). The snippet below is not about that specifically, but it relates.  Teachers learn to teach by teaching.  Remember student teachers?  I can't help but agree with what follows:
For those of us that like drastic solutions and saltational mutations, one way to fix the perpetual crises (existential, and otherwise) that colleges and universities seem to find themselves in would be this: get out the axe. Axe the business school, axe all the engineering programs, axe the professional programs, axe even (hard as it is to say) the fine arts programs. So no more accounting majors and no more civil engineering majors, no more masters of public health, and no more dance majors, or creative writing majors, or bassoonists, either.

The thing most of those programs have in common is that they’re crafts—things better learned by doing than by sitting and discussing the doing.
h/t 3QD