#6 - Willingness - Opinion
There are a few things that are priceless. Communication is one. It’s like the Universal Solvent. It can resolve anything. Anything that furthers, strengthens, contributes to, promotes or helps communication is a good thing. Anything that hinders, slows, stops, prevents or alters communication is bad.
You could actually use that as a decision making tool. If you can’t decide if something is good or bad, just look at it and see if it hurts or helps communication. If it hurts communication, it’s bad. If it helps communication, it’s good.
Willingness, although maybe a little more subjective, works the same way. If a student is unwilling to learn something, no gimmick in the world will get the student to learn or retain the information. If a student is willing to learn something, it will probably stick. It will be there for further use.
Willingness can be dampened and defeated in a number of ways; duress, punishment, ridicule, complexity including false or misleading information. There are a million ways to do it.
A good teacher can recognize, generate, develop and protect a student's willingness. Clever or knowledgeable or inventive ways of delivering information are also traits of a good educator, but student willingness is senior and has to come first.
Willingness can be dulled or canceled in an infinite number of ways. Stress, duress and punishment are the first ones you think of. But “force feeding” or deception are just as effective.
Workable teaching techniques have evolved over thousands of years. For some subjects, the material changes as new technology develops. For other subjects, traditional content is appropriate. Just because it's been around for a while, that doesn't mean it's bad or wrong. “Old School” might work really well or it might even be the best solution.
Recent “discoveries” and methodologies are often ineffective or riddled with covert motives. Some curricula, materials and books even harm people. They indoctrinate students into this or that way of thinking when all we want to do is have them learn something.
We could go on and on about willingness. Academics will probably analyze it in a dozen different ways. Most important is to make sure students are willing to learn. All of the rest of it is interesting, but the main focus has to be willingness. That's 90% of the battle.
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