29 noviembre, 2011

Learning beyond content

I’m not a chef and I don’t consider myself a cook, but the truth is that I’ve been cooking every day for the last twenty years, maybe more. So, even though my cooking skills don’t appear on my resume, cooking is the only thing that I’ve been doing consistently for a long time. Now, listen to this: nobody taught me, at least not in a formal, systematic or structured way.

So, I didn’t go to cooking school and my mom –a working mom-- didn’t have the time to teach me. How did I learn? By doing it. There were, of course, a series of unfortunate mishaps: burnt food, oily eggs, undercooked meat, overly salty soups. You name it, I did it all. Never mind, the good news is I learned.

In this sense, learning how to cook was more an everyday exercise than a matter of inputting, absorbing or remembering recipes, measurement tables or whatever.

And the fact that I didn’t have a teacher doesn’t make me think that we don’t need teachers. We do, but we need the kind of teachers that teach beyond content. In fact, I have had wonderful teachers throughout my life, but what I learned from them had little to do with “content”. My favorite teachers taught me more than academic knowledge, they taught me –with their example-- to be passionate, to put things into perspective, and most importantly, to embrace knowledge to make life better, not just for me, but for everybody else.
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8 comentarios:

  1. This is a lovely post Veronika and well said!

    Chrissi

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  2. Verónica comparação boa culinária, e de ensino são muito semelhantes. Espero google traduz bem isso.

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  3. HI Veronica, like you read my mind. Great and lovely post. Cooking, uf, my problem as well, but am trying. On the other hand - teaching - well, I also try to teach my students not just the content, but also to be tolerante, passionate and to appreciate each other

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  4. Lovely post. How well we all remember those fantastic teachers in our lives who didn't just teach content but were concerned with educating us towards a life of compassion, social justice and a love of learning.

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  5. Hi, Jaap,
    Google translated it well. Thanks for the comment :)

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  6. Hi, Marijana,
    I do think that as educators we are kind of obligated to teach more than content.

    Thank you for your nice comment :)

    Regards,
    V.

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  7. Hi, MOOC Meanderer,
    Yes, we need educators who want to make a better world.

    Thank you for your insightful comment :)

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