There are many qualities a parent should look for in a teacher they want to hire. (And speaking of hiring teachers, did you know I lead an education company that helps homeschooling families and private schools find quality teachers? I do but I have also digressed. Sorry. I left the link so you could check it out after you’re finished reading, if you’d like.)
Anyway, in an effort help families find good teachers and teachers be the kind a family would like to hire to teach their child, I would like to suggest what I believe are three essential—though often overlooked—qualities parents ought to be aware of and teachers should want to strive for.
First, a good teacher knows the end (telos) of education. In a world driven by democratic impulses, good teachers need to know the goal of education without being blown around by every wind of educational doctrine.
For example, education is not job training meant to help students achieve the American Dream. It’s also not civic formation where they are taught to “fit in” and become cogs in the system.
The purpose of educating children is to prepare them to be virtuous and wise free men and women in the kingdom of God.
George Herbert’s poem, “The Church-Porch,” where it deals with education, is enlightening to this end:
O England! full of sinne, but most of sloth;
Spit out thy flegme, and fill thy brest with glorie:
Thy Gentrie bleats, as if thy native cloth
Transfus’d a sheepishnesse into thy storie:
Not that they all are so; but that the most
Are gone to grasse, and in the pasture lost.This losse springs chiefly from our education.
Some till their ground, but let weeds choke their sonne:
Some mark a partridge, never their childes fashion:
Some ship them over, and the thing is done.
Studie this art, make it thy great designe;
And if Gods image move thee not, let thine.Some great estates provide, but doe not breed
A mast’ring minde; so both are lost thereby:
Or els they breed them tender, make them need
All that they leave: this is flat povertie.
For he, that needs five thousand pound to live,
Is full as poore as he, that needs but five.The way to make thy sonne rich, is to fill
His minde with rest, before his trunk with riches:
For wealth without contentment, climbes a hill
To feel those tempests, which fly over ditches.
But if thy sonne can make ten pound his measure,
Then all thou addest may be call’d his treasure.
Second, a good teacher knows and understands the kinds and the degrees of his subject. In other words, he is able to judge accurately where a student is in his or her intellectual journey because the teacher is a master of that subject. A good teacher also knows when a student really has reached the ceiling of his or her intellectual capacity in said subject—and when the student is just slothful or distracted.
To say it another way, a good teacher has not bought into the fallacious and absurd view of democratic education. This may be jarring or disturbing to some, but to say any one student can be just as effective at math (for example) as any other student the same age or grade level is to say any student could play professional sports or be the president of the United States—if they just want it bad enough.
Each individual is uniquely created (Psalm 139:14) and possesses his own particular gifts and endowments. That’s not to say every person can’t improve on something if he works hard at improving. But that is not the same thing as saying we are all created equal, intellectually. Of course, in reference to our worth and dignity as human beings, and our legal standing under the law in the U.S., it’s true we are indeed all created equal! A good teacher knows this distinction and embraces it, which lead me to the third quality of a good teacher.
A good teacher is courageous and patient amidst the competing democratic pressures. He’s not moved by obnoxious voices preaching the morality of equal outcome. He is not swayed by the coach to grade on a curve so Johnny can be “eligible” for team sports. A good teacher is not going to “cut Suzy some slack” when her mother is cries and her father is embarrassed because she failed to meet their expectations. And a good teacher is not going “teach to the test” so the school administrator gets an award for the school’s highest overall test scores.
A good teacher is not pressured by democratic impulses or bothered by the differences in students’ abilities—because he knows one’s intellectual abilities have nothing to do with one’s personal worth. And he compassionately reminds the disappointed student of this reality.
Some students will, of course, go further academically than others just like some students will obviously do better at sports or music than other students. Yet, it’s interesting that while the former is almost always suspect, the latter is almost never questioned.
In short, a good teacher knows the purpose of education, judges the student’s intellectual abilities relying on his or her own mastery of the subject and the particular level of study in which the student is currently engaged, and he never waivers from his holy work of educating students and evaluating their intellectual achievements despite the various competing impulses that try to set an alternate agenda for his work.
If the topic of teaching is of interest to you, perhaps you’d enjoy listening this episode of The Consortium Podcast in which Joffre Swait and I further explore the qualities of a good teacher.