The Subject vs. The Teacher

The subject is less important than the teacher.

As Adam Grant recently said, “The mark of education isn’t the knowledge you collect in your head. It’s the skills you gain about how to learn.”

It is better to have great music teacher than an adequate algebra teacher.

It is better to be in an elective class a student engages with than a “core” class they’re uninterested in.

It is far better to give teachers the autonomy to engage the students in front of them, and concern themselves with the meta-lessons of education, than to micromanage their daily lessons so that no one in the classroom is connected.

In our hurry to create comprehensive and uniform benchmarks, we risk forgetting that the best lessons we learn have nothing to do with dates or formulae (or solfege!). The best lessons we give our students are about passion and curiosity. These lessons have nothing to do with course material and everything to do with human connection.