Teaching Philosophy

The Humanizing Effect of Knowledge

Albert Einstein is remembered not only for discovering radical physical laws, but also for his humanity, simplicity, and humor. His example hints at an intriguing possibility: that genuine knowledge and insight give rise to qualities like goodwill, warmth, and optimism.

This idea is easy to doubt. We can all point to experts whose knowledge has not softened their character—people who are brilliant in their fields yet sour, cynical, or selfish. These examples tempt us to conclude that being well-informed has little relationship to generosity of spirit, and perhaps even a negative one.

Yet many intellectual and philosophical traditions suggest the opposite: that real understanding tends to deepen humility, sympathy, and generosity. If that is so, then the word real in “real understanding” points to an important distinction. Some knowledge remains external, while other knowledge is understood in a way that changes how one thinks and responds.

In my experience, knowledge is transformative when it provokes a shift in the student’s mind—something they recognize, even if they cannot fully articulate it. My teaching approach is an attempt to create the conditions in which that shift can occur.

My teaching (and learning) philosophy rests on a few core pillars:

that real knowledge is actual, coherent, and beneficial, and that when one of these qualities is missing, something essential is lacking;
that students already know much of what they are “taught” before entering a classroom, and that a teacher’s task is to help them construct deeper understanding by uncovering and assembling what they already know;
that human beings are unique in their capacity to work with both meaning and symbols, and that technology—while capable of providing powerful assistance in storing and manipulating symbols—cannot form objectives, assign meaning to symbols, evaluate qualities that transcend formal definition, or feel the satisfaction of being trusted, which is the bond that binds teachers and students and the medium through which genuine understanding flows;
that Quality, and its elements called qualities, are the fundamental building blocks of information, and that both teachers and students excel when they learn to see the world through a qualitative lens. (This idea will be explained in greater depth below.)

Intrinsic Knowledge Based on Quality

There is a memorable scene in Robert Pirsig’s autobiographical novel Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance in which a professor teaching freshman rhetoric arrives at an unsettling realization: rules for good writing can be helpful, but they do not define what good writing is. To test this, he asks his students to choose between pairs of essays. Again and again, they choose the better one—even though they cannot explain why.

From this, the professor draws a provocative conclusion: the students already possess the ability to recognize good writing. At first, they resist this idea. They assume that recognizing quality requires specialized instruction or authority. The students who struggle most with this discovery are often the “good students,” those who are most accustomed to following rules and waiting for teachers to tell them what is correct.

The professor eventually removes grades from the course altogether. His point is not that quality is arbitrary, but that it is not created by the teacher’s judgment. Instead, students must learn to recognize it directly for themselves.

This story informs how I think about teaching. The lesson is not that expertise or instruction are unnecessary. Rather, it is that students often possess the ability to recognize quality long before they can formally define it. Part of a teacher’s responsibility, therefore, is not simply to transmit information, but to help students become conscious of capacities they already possess.

In my teaching, this means creating situations where students are surprised—sometimes even frustrated—to discover that their past beliefs were incomplete, and feel compelled to re-examine, compare, and evaluate ideas rather than merely repeat them. Definitions, formulas, and rules still matter—they help clarify and refine understanding—but they are most powerful when they grow out of a student’s own recognition of coherence and meaning. When that recognition occurs, learning no longer feels like the memorization of external instructions. Instead, it feels like the discovery and organization of something that was already within reach—perhaps even intrinsic to human psychology or the natural world.

For background on my current teaching roles, visit the About page. For a concrete example of how I have tried to put these ideas into practice, visit the Teaching with Technology page.