To Teach

There are terms that play such a central role in our lives that we feel no need to probe their meaning. For us, the term is teach.

What does it mean?

Houghton-Mifflin eReference furnishes quite a list. The main thrust is to "impart or provide knowledge and skill. This presumes that we teachers know something that our learners don't; accordingly, we give it to them. Now they have it.

Entreprenuerial teaching and entreprenuerial learning, our OBTC 08 theme, challenges this tidy transaction. I see it as less a give to take proposition and more a matter of take to give.

I use take in this latter sense: to be receptive to; or to be naturally attracted or fitted to. . When being entreprenueiral, we are seeking to cross and close gaps in knowledge, so we have less to impart and more to investigate. "Take to give" means teachiing is to exhibit a receptivity to new information, fresh theories, and uncommon situations. We learn in this stance in order to give others the benefit of our findings or realizations.

Teaching this way, I would encourage learners to share my attraction to knowing more about a given topic or subject, rather than to just tell them what I know. My job is to foster their attraction to same; then structure the lesson so that they explore it, create their own unique brand of knowledge about it, then give their interpretation as information for others to use to build on the attraction and enhance their own "take" on the question at hand.

Here is the definition of teach that seems to come closest to what I am espousing: To condition to a certain action or frame of mind.

What do you think about teaching so as to encourage an entreprenuerial frame of mind?