The Calling of Teaching
Key to the future of liberty.
I’m spending this week speaking at an Institute for Humane Studies seminar for college students interested in libertarian ideas. This follows my participation two weekends ago at another IHS seminar, one for graduate students and faculty members interested in becoming better teachers. One great thing about both experiences is the opportunity to be around, and inspired by, other great teachers. It’s also great to teach in a room where the students are all thrilled to be there and excited to hear you talk. As comedians would say, it’s an easy room.
The two seminars have also got me thinking about teaching and its role in the liberty movement. Having spent my career at an institution where I teach a lot and where teaching is highly valued, I’m long used to thinking about the power of the classroom for young people in general. However, only recently has the libertarian movement begun to think seriously about how important really good teachers are to opening people’s minds to our ideas, especially at the high school and college levels, when students are most amenable to them. Part of this new focus has been driven by the realities of higher education, where we have done well at producing more Ph.D.s but face a climate where tenure-track jobs are dwindling and competition makes it hard for everyone to get one at a research-oriented school. More libertarian academics are going to wind up at places like mine, and to be successful both as a professor and at generating student interest in liberty, they will need to be excellent teachers.
Greatest Impact
Not everyone will be the next Hayek. Most of us will have our greatest impact in the classroom, where the number of students we teach over a career can add up very quickly. That’s going to be many more people than the number who read our relatively obscure scholarly articles (though not this column!).
So how does one become an excellent teacher? At the evening reception the other night, one of the students here asked me precisely that question, and I answered with three terms: passion, empathy, and love.
Expertise and excellent teaching have the same source: passion about the subject. If you aren’t passionate about what you do, I’m not sure how you can be a truly excellent teacher. That same passion should also lead you to become knowledgeable about your subject. I love economics, and it’s what drives me to know more, to write, and to master the discipline. I think my passion comes across in my classroom and in other public speaking. Every year Israel Kirzner gives an introductory lecture for graduate students at FEE’s Advanced Austrian Economics Seminar. Even in his early 80s he gives that talk with the passion of someone doing it for the first time and as though it was the most important thing in the world. That is a mark of an excellent teacher.
Seeing the World as Students See It
Empathy is the ability to see the world as your students see it so you can offer explanations they can grasp. I don’t mean just using examples that touch on their culture but something deeper. An excellent teacher has to be able to explain concepts and use words that are accessible to the student. This often means eschewing the technical language of the discipline, or at least not starting there. Really great teachers are really great “explainers” because their audience perceives them as clear communicators. Doing that requires knowing your audience, and that requires this sort of empathy, which is often the result of careful listening to the questions students ask. Great teachers aren’t just great speakers but great listeners too.
Love here is not about the subject matter; it’s about the students. Great teachers really like and respect their students. They treat them fairly, they treat them as adults, and they hold high expectations for them. They also listen sympathetically and try to give them the benefit of the doubt until they demonstrate they don’t deserve it. Students respond to teachers whose default mode is to love them in this sense. If you don’t like and respect your students, that will come across quickly in the classroom and you will lose many of them in the process.
The power of great teachers is never to be underestimated. If we are to move forward to freedom, a key part of that process will take place in the classroom, where young people’s views of the world are up for grabs. No matter how right we think the ideas of freedom are, they have to be communicated and taught in ways that are powerful and effective. That means great teaching. The more great teachers we have and the more we think about how to do the job well, the better the prospects for liberty.
Comment by The Libertarian Homeschooler on 28 July 2011:
I would argue that early childhood is the time to start telling the child, “You own you.” And to explain the Zero-Aggression Principle. And to commit to memory the two laws: Do all that you have agreed to do. Do not encroach upon the person or property of another by force or fraud. It’s also the time when you model your respect for his ownership of self and property by acting as if he is a human being. Putting a child in a State school teaches the lesson that the State feeds, protects, disciplines, medicates, educates, evaluates, and otherwise controls you. This is not a lesson you want your young child to absorb. Bring the child home. Ten is not too young to read Bastiat. Six is not to young to understand unintended consequences. Three is not to young to understand “This is your property.”
Comment by David Friedman on 28 July 2011:
“Great teachers really like and respect their students.”
I actually had an interesting demonstration of the effect many years ago. I was teaching essentially the same course for the University of Chicago Business School to two rather different groups of students. One was an EMBA course, one a part time MBA course.
It ended up with the EMBA students, or at least a good many of them, hating me, in part because I had caught them cheating and said so, in part because Executive MBA students tend to have a high opinion of themselves and expect their teachers to agree. To a considerable degree, I reponsded to them in kind. The part time students, an older and more relaxed group, liked me and I liked them. I did a much better job of teaching the latter group than the former.
With regard to your point about empathy, one way of improving your ability to understand your students, in particular to understand why they don’t understand you, is to spend time discussing the same questions in something closer to a peer to peer context. The particular example I’m thinking of is online argumentation. Your students may be reluctant to explain to you why they think what you are saying is obviously nonsense; the people you argue with online, on the other hand, will be happy to do so.
One example … . I eventually concluded that what makes many people reject economic arguments is the belief that they are unicausal. Consider the relation between welfare payments and births to unwed mothers. It’s easy for the non-economist to think the economist is claiming that women have babies in order to get welfare payments–and reject that as implausible after thinking about all the costs associated with bringing up a small child.
What the economist is actually claiming is that women make decisions affecting the chance of having a baby without a husband on the basis of an implicit calculation of net costs, of which pecuniary costs (and benefits) are only one part. For some women the result will be a net cost that is positive but low, hence may be pushed below zero by an increase in welfare support. It’s a simple point, but one that may never occur to the teacher if he isn’t in situations where other people feel free to tell him why he is wrong.
Finally, I think one very important point, which you mention, is the attitude of the students. It’s a great deal easier to teach students things they want to learn than to teach them things you want them to learn. That’s one reason I am willing to do a substantial amount of unpaid teaching, both lectures in my field and classes in my hobby of historical recreation. Everyone in the room (or tent) is there because he wants to be.
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[...] today’s Freeman column, economics professor Steven Horwitz (St. Lawrence University) writes about how important it is for [...]
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[...] Want to read a fun article? Follow the link and read the rest of Dr. Horwitz’s thoughts on teaching. http://www.thefreemanonline.org/headline/calling-of-teaching/ [...]
Comment by Guillermo Barba on 28 July 2011:
A wonderful companion of this article is: James M. Banner and Harold C. Cannon: The elements of teaching
Comment by Dr. T on 28 July 2011:
Most people’s fundamental values are formed during early childhood. Teenagers apply (and experiment with) those values, but they rarely overturn them. Thus, it is uncommon for children raised religiously to become atheists. It is equally uncommon for children raised to be needy, greedy, and irresponsible to adopt libertarianism (which requires that people be self-reliant, ethical, and responsible).
Great libertarian high school and college teachers (all five of them in the USA) can help teenagers and young adults with the right background adopt libertarianism. They cannot do the same with the majority of teenagers who are primed to become supporters of nannystatist big government.
The battle of libertarianism vs. nannystatism will not be won in high school and college classrooms. It probably will not be won at all, since most people lack the characteristics needed for libertarianism to flourish. A libertarian society can work only if it is restricted to those persons who want it. Libertarians who want such a society need to pull a modern John Galt: buy an island or build an undersea colony. They aren’t going to get such a society by teaching, preaching, or debating within a nanny state.
Comment by John on 28 July 2011:
Let’s just see what your students say…
http://www.ratemyprofessors.com/ShowRatings.jsp?tid=880471
“Stay away from him. He is economically conservative and socially liberal and a mess overall. He also gives a ton of busy work and expects students to always agree with him.”
I’m not too worried about what the rater said, BUT NO RED CHILI PEPPER? REALLY?! You really need to beef up that teaching wardrobe!
Comment by Steve Horwitz on 28 July 2011:
Yes, RMP is the place to go to get the inside story…
It’s gonna take more than a wardrobe upgrade to get the GUYS to give me a chili pepper!
Comment by Mathieu on 29 July 2011:
Last year was the first year I’ve teached a class, intro to econ, though I did do recitations prior to that. I really strive to be a great teacher, but I’m concious that not halfway there yet.
Reflecting on this year’s classes I thought that maybe I spent too much time on making sure everyone was understanding, and maybe I should have gone faster, given less examples and covered more material, and perhaps introduced more math. I felt like part of the reason so few of the students were doing the assignments and readings was because they knew I would be spending a lot of time on those in class. I think my problem may be knowing when those who got it make a satisfactory portion of the students and it is time to move on. My question is this: do you think it is possible to give too much passion, empathy and love? Any advice?
Comment by Martin Turian on 29 July 2011:
Values are acquired through training or belief. Freedom is not taught, it should show. The frog only know the mud. A good idea by itself is not acquired. Liberalism is a poster child for a good product that does not have much demand. I think we should focus on this issue. It should concern only the product but also the packaging. Simplify the libertarian speech adapting to the realities of society. We live in the world a fierce attack on individual freedom with full resignation and even acceptance. Unheard of. I think we are more than we need theory and praxis. An example is the fall of the Berlin Wall. What influenced the Germans in East Berlin to “see” the realities of Berlin Occcidental?. Atte.
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