Abstract
Some readers may wonder why the chapter that asks “what is teaching, after all?” appears as Chapter 8 instead of Chapter 1. The reason is that the nuances and subtleties of the analysis I wish to offer here will resonate much more deeply (I think) now that I have taken time to discuss both my educational philosophy and many of teaching’s important dynamics in everyday classrooms. I hope my discussion here will be seen as an extension of arguments that I have been making from page one rather than as a pert and peppy way to give book buyers their money’s worth by offering a carry-away definition. Besides, my notion of what-teaching-is-after-all is not a starting point. It is a culmination, the consequence of many prior considerations.
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Notes
Paul H. Hirst, “What Is Teaching?,” in Classic and Contemporary Readings in the Philosophy of Education, ed. Steven M. Cahn (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1997), 447–448.
Many writers have constructed insightful analyses and descriptions of the media revolution, beginning with Marshall McLuhan back in the sixties, whose book, Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man (1964), was the first in a flood of similar writings. Neil Postman’s two books—The Disappearance of Childhood (1982) and Amusing Ourselves to Death: Publie Discourse in the Age of Show Business (1985)—remain among the most insightful of such commentaries. Sven Birkerts’s Gutenberg Elegies (1995) caught national attention as a judicious and thoughtful lament over the loss of psychological and emotional richness presaged by the (comparative) disappearance of reading. Cognitive scientists are investigating the neural and cognitive aspects of reading,
as in Maryanne Wolf’s Proust and the Squid: The Story and Science of the Reading Brain (2007), while other scholars ponder the practical effects of media engagement versus reading books, as in Nicholas Carr’s much discussed essay, “Is Google Making Us Stupid?,” Atlantic Monthly, July/August, 2008, an essay that Carr followed up with a book, The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains (New York: Norton, 2010), that includes references to a large number of very recent studies showing how people’s persistent interactions with network links is, as a consequence of brain plasticity, producing serious alterations in brain morphology that few people yet have thought to analyze the full implications of.
Another book that offers a thoughtful discussion of the limits on teaching reading that contemporary teachers may have to accept is Alan Jacobs, The Pleasures of Reading in an Age of Distraction (New York: Oxford UP, 2011).
Leon R. Kass, “The Aims of Liberal Education,” 1981, The Aims of Education (Chicago: The College of the University of Chicago, 1997), edited by John W. Boyer, 90.
W. H. Auden, “The Unknown Citizen,” 1940, Another Time (New York: Faber and Faber, 2007).
Leo Tolstoy, The Death of Ivan Illych, 1886 (New York: Signet Classics, 1960).
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© 2013 Melissa Valiska Gregory
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Gregory, M., Gregory, M.V. (2013). What Is Teaching, After All?. In: Gregory, M.V. (eds) Teaching Excellence in Higher Education. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137373762_8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137373762_8
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