Customer Reviews

The Art of Teaching

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1 star:		(7)

 

 

I feel a little embarrassed for some of the reviewers below who criticize Highet for his vocabulary and intellectualism.Dumbed down teachers must be a real inspiration in their Missouri classrooms!

I purchased a copy of Highet's book from a used bookstore in my town and it has inspired me ever since. Much of what he writes may be "common sense", but many teachers would benefit from a healthy dose of it. I promise that any teacher who reads this book with an open mind instead of contempt for any ideas more than ten years old will become a more effective teacher.

The other reviews of this book seem to me to be judging it by an unfair standard. The main criticism is that it fails to be an up-to-date book of the latest classroom techniques. Well, it makes no claim to be any such thing. Gilbert Highet was a master teacher at Columbia University for decades. His teaching career began in the 30's and ended in the 70's. As a beginning college teacher, I can only dream of educating as many young people as Highet did in the course of his career. Those who say that we have nothing to learn from a teacher of his experience and who lack the imagination to read past his dated language and quaint examples to hear the wisdom he has to offer are the very people who are to blame for the sorry state of American education. If we as a culture were more open to hearing the wisdom of our elders and more aware of the great historical tradition in which we stand, maybe we would have something worth teaching to our young people. Highet had an amazing historical sense, and we would do well to learn from him.

Gilbert Highett was a brilliant scholar, a brilliant teacher, and, if the hints from this book give any indication, a humane and caring person. The Art of Teaching is everything you would therefore expect, filled with thoughtful and practical hints, as well as more global meditations on teaching. Keep in mind that it was written by a university teacher, educated in the Oxbridge (i.e. Oxford-Cambridge) tradition of tutorials (i.e., class meetings of 2 to 6 students), and he was not writing a formulaic manual, nor did he write specifically for American secondary teachers. (If the gross application of formulae and prescriptions is your idea of teaching, then you have already decided that teaching is not an _art_, and it's surprising you would be considering a book with this title.) People who approach the book expecting such a manual are likely to be dissatisfied, to advertise their own ignorance, and to suffer through it in frustration. If you are, like Highett, an educated and humane individual, this book will repay your time, and you will appreciate its nuance, its wisdom, and its timelessness.

Teaching is NOT a science. So underscores at the outset of The Art of Teaching its author, Gilbert Highet. Highet (1906-78), a sort of "Yankee Don," was an Oxford-educated Scot who spent a long, illustrious career at Columbia University teaching, and writing on, the classics.

The Art of Teaching may have just turned fifty years old, but I can think of no timelier book than this classic, which has remained continuously in print, as a corrective to almost a century of progressive pedagogical destruction.

Gilbert Highet warns the reader that he will not be offering any curricular proposals, or telling us how to teach particular subjects. His concern is with teaching in the broadest possible sense. Thus, while he discusses with great candor and not a little irony different types of pupils, and the respective virtues of the lecture and tutorial systems, he devotes one-third of the book to teachers, none of whom are educators, as far as today's "professionals" are concerned: "Great teachers and their pupils," and teachers "in everyday life" (e.g., parents, spouses, clergymen, advertisers). Highet points out that we are, all of us, constantly learning from, and teaching others, whether or not we are conscious of this, or even wish to do so.

The great teachers and students range from the Sophists on through the 19th and 20th centuries. He is especially fond of the Jesuits, and of 19th-century pedagogues.

There is a delightfully generous pragmatism to this man, who is able to appreciate parents' primary roles in education, and to learn even from Soviet and Nazi educators.

In some ways this book is quaint, and in others prophetic; but in every way, it is of perennial interest to the intellectually curious and spiritually hungry.

Its quaintness obtains in telling, in shocked tones, of the then-extraordinary case of the school boy who urinated on a textbook in front of his teacher and class. Today, more than a few New York City assistant principals might breath a sigh of relief, upon being confronted with the same situation: 'Well -- it's not like he raped somebody!'

The book becomes prophetic, when Highet explains why teachers cannot also be social workers charged with improving their students' extra-curricular lives. Teaching is exhausting work. At the end of the school day, a dedicated teacher has no energy left to solve problems for which he has no expertise. (Were Highet alive today, I think he'd see that no one possesses such expertise.)

But we live in an age of activist teachers, who claim to be able to fix students' sex, family, and -- though they are hostile towards religion -- spiritual lives. Contemporary teachers' indifference toward trivialities such as grammar, math, and history, frees up their energy for urgent pedagogical concerns such as sex, death, and race, permitting them to ruin students' academic and extracurricular lives.

A good teacher, says Highet, has three primary characteristics.

"First, and most necessary of all ... he must know what he teaches...."

Second, a teacher must LIKE what he teaches. Highet tells of an ignoramus he once encountered who was trusted to teach introductory French, yet who had never read Moliere, and "never will. I don't really like French at all. What I like is basketball. We've got a great little team at Woodside."

Highet continues that, "The third essential of good teaching is to like the pupils."

Well, that's three strikes against most of today's public school teachers and tenured professors.

Ideas Highet champions that were already then unfashionable, include teachers' need to have, and to teach, will-power. He similarly praises the central role of a powerful memory in teaching and learning, which today's progressive pedagogues deride as "mere rote memorization." And although writing at a time of relative safety in the schools, Highet addresses the problem of thuggish boys, for which he has a simple, no-nonsense solution: Such boys must be taught by MEN who themselves exude the sort of masculinity and toughness that the boys will respect.

While Highet does not polemicize, he is at sword's point with much of his age's progressive pedagogy, and is anathema to the radical feminists/multiculturalists, who for the past thirty years, have eliminated more intellectually demanding, pre-1970 literature, have henpecked the teaching profession and teacher education, and emasculated the boys in our nation's classrooms, all the while denying responsibility for what they have wrought. ("Education merely reflects society.")

To gauge how far we have fallen, and thus how much we need to re-learn Highet's lessons, consider the contumely recently heaped on him by some American feminist graduate students of teacher education at amazon.com:

"... a very out-dated [sic] book that should not be used in any classroom."

"His exultation of the Jesuit methods of teaching focusing on memorization and recitation are very out of line with current educational theory" [amen!].

"Highet, the author, does a very good job of ostracising [sic] his readers with his use of elaborate vocabulary and his extreme use of historical figures I have barely heard of."

As Descartes (1596-1650), who was educated by the Jesuits, pointed out, all education depends on memory. Which raises the question, Why would progressive/constructivist pedagogues be so hostile towards any method that increases children's memory?

The most general answer is anti-intellectualism. If children grow up to be citizens with poor powers of concentration, short attention spans, and the weak memories that flow from them -- the very characteristics which "progressive" pedagogues decry, and blame on the mass media -- they will be all the more pliable for the progressives' experiments in social engineering.

A complementary explanation, is that progressives wish to rewrite history at will, and so seek to destroy the collective memory of civilization.

You don't have to be a parent or educator, in order to enjoy reading Gilbert Highet. But if you are responsible for a child's education, you might consider employing the principles he enumerates as part of a home-schooling program, in the selection of a private school, or as a subversive program for when your government-schooled child is at home.

Originally published in the March/April, 2001 issue of The American Enterprise.

This book was first published over fifty-six years ago. It still stands as a classic mind opener to anyone who is truly interested in becoming a teacher or in improving his or her skills as an educator. If you are only interested in band wagons and believe that no real learning has taken place before your appearance on the scene, this book will be a disappointment. Highet takes an analytical and historical approach to the greatest of teachers and their methods. In doing so, he provides one of the finest examinations of the methodology of the Classic Greek School a layman could hope to find.

Highet encourages a love for learning, a love for children and a passion for sharing only the finest with our students. My guess is that he would have been opposed to "dumbing down" on many counts, but primarily because of the lack of respect it shows for the potential of the student.

In a mere five pages, Highet manages to encapsulate the essence of what made Jesuit education so distinctive and valuable to the world of ideas. It makes it clear to those who read his words these many years later that the loss of Jesuit identity and methodology at their own institutions which took place in the end of the twentieth century has been a tragic loss.

At present, I think I am on my fifteen to twentieth re-read of this work. I still need to be open and keep up to date with the latest theories and findings and wade through the flood of latest and greatest found in journals and theses. More is being revealed. Let us make no mistake about it, though, Highet was a giant of a mind with an awesome soul. His attitude toward teaching makes this veteran much less resentful about the lack of monetary reward my career has brought me. It makes me feel humble and honored to have been part of a noble tradition of individuals who drank deeply from the well springs of the fount of ideas, culture, humanism and spirituality. It makes me want to redouble my efforts to bring yet another generation to that spring for nurture that they might live life more deeply and, in turn, attempt to leave the world better than it was upon their arrival.

I fear that the one-star reviews for this book show a lot about what is wrong with modern public education. True, Highet's book is out of date in some respects. It does not adhere to current PC standards, and a cursory reading would make it seem to have little relevance for "21st-Century" schools. However, a careful, considered study of this book will show that a little mental editing and interpretation on the part of the reader will show that it is as true as it ever was.
I first read this book in the summer of 1965 as part of the requirements for one of those dreadful, mind-destroying "professional education" courses which are the root of almost all our current problems with schools. It was like finding a diamond in a dunghill! in the succeeding 38 years which I have spent as a classroom teacher, I have found all of Highet's material to be true: the need for careful preparation, the need to LIKE young people, how to lecture, how to involve the entire class, etc.
EVERY prospective teacher should read and study this book. If he or she is put off by a normal literate English vocabulary, then teaching is the wrong profession to go into!

This book was recommended to me by a veteran, well-respected college professor. I was embarrassed to read the bad reviews below. The self-applause that modern educators continue to bath in about trendy and often destructive teaching methods is appalling. To disagree with the late Highet on this or that point is one thing. However, to systematically dismiss the idea that Socrates, Aristotle, even Jesus for crying out loud have anything "relevant" to say is absurd. If people are Masters Degree candidates and cannot understand Highet's so-called "vocabulary" or know about anyone he mentions is...well...scary. I've owned this book for years and am reviewing it now to get the star count back up to where it deserves to be.

It's true that Highet is sometimes patronizing, but some people deserve it. It's true that today researchers advocate different methods, but that doesn't make Highet wrong; maybe they're wrong.

I agree, though, that he is prolix, but I prefer it to academese or psychologese.

But the gaggle of reviewers from Missouri could have at least lied about where they were from. The last thing education theory needs is a Middle-Western soft-core feminist conspiracy against a sensible, soft-spoken don.

I am distressed by some of the reviews posted concerning this excellent book. Since when did thorough preparation, ever-increasing command of subject matter, and relevancy in the lives of students fall out of disfavor with some of my colleagues? Highet presents, at least in the first half of this book, the absolute fundamentals of good teaching in a clear and precise way. The examples, while perhaps sounding quaint, are still relevant for good teaching today. Highet makes it clear that good teaching is a way of life rather than a way to make a buck. We need this kind of reminder, and my fellow teachers and I need to get back to the basics of great teaching that Highet outlines. In an age of flim-flam techniques and razzle-dazzle entertainment passing as good teaching, this book is refreshing.

Gilbert Highet wrote an informative yet charming book on teaching. THE ART OF TEACHING was published in 1950, but Highet's suggestions and insights are still useful and relevant. Highet would probably be shocked over what is now expected 56 years after this book first appeared, but his book is still important and useful.

Gilbert Highet not only presents effective suggestions, he enlightens his readers about The Great Books of Western Civilization. This is important in that intelligent men have been good teachers. For example, Highet cites Socrates (c470-399 BC)as an example of a good teacher and one not impressed by the more "professional" sophists. Highet cites Huxley as a great lecturer, and lauds Henri Bergson (1850-1941) as examples of knowledeable men who could effectively lecture to large audiences. Highet gives high praise to the Jesuits whose passion for knowledge and good teaching was well know and even openly admitted by their most severe critics. To paraphrase Highet, the Jesuits' worst enemies never condemned the Jesuits for bad teaching.

The anecdotes that Highet uses are useful not only as examples of great teaching, these anecdotes reflect Highet's vast learning. This reviewer read many of the books that Highet cites and found Highet's insights to be profound. A well read man could benefit from THE ART OF TEACHING in that he would re-read some of the classis in literature, philosophy, history, etc and gain importnat insight that he did not previously have. Highet incites the careful reader to read the Classics and Great Books both for their useful suggestions and the merits of great thinking and writing. For example, Highet often refers to Aristotle (384-322 BC), Shakespeare (1564-1616) whose great dramatic literature are examples of moral codes, moral dilemmas, etc. and certainly food for thought.

Given Highet's vast knowledge, he offers three basic requirements for good teaching. First the good teacher must have a thorough knowledge of the academic discipline. The good teacher must also have a passion for what they teach. Finally, Highet suggests that the good teacher must like his/her students.

Highet demonstrates his learning by the numerous citations of great men and Great Books.

The final chapter of THE ART OF TEACHING is the weakest. Highet could have revised this chapter or used something else. Yet, he does make some good points regarding parents and children which should be learned by every parent of school age children.

One must again note that Highet's book was published in 1950 when there may have been some hope. Highet does cite problems of violent, disruptive students and admits there may be no immediate solution. However, he would be shocked to know that many public high schools are increasingly dangerous places to work. He would also be shocked at the intellectual apathy of too many students. Part of the blame can be attributed to "educational experts" who know nothing of substantial learning. These "experts" claim to have all these methods that are suppose to solve all problems of learning and teaching. Yet, the record of applying these methods is increased illiteracy and lack of learning. Students and parents are not held responsible, and learning is the students' responsibility and not the teachers' fault. Rather than collect phony surveys and accumulate statistics, "experts" should have a clear uderstanding of cause-effect relationships. The "experts" do not understand this because to understand cause and effect relationships requires knowledge and reason which these "experts" do not have.

Highet also encourages teachers to urge students to achieve intellectual prowess and and knowledge. He offers suggestions to help both teachers and students. What is sad is that current view of education "experts" is that students should not excel. The situation was bad enough when such experts argued that teachers should not know more than their students. Now, these "experts" argue that teachers should know less. So called education experts are now promoting that "No child should be left behind." This actually means that no serious student should ever get ahead. The fact is serious learning requires patience, self discipline, hard study, etc. These requirements are now replaced by political correct nonsense and phony sensitivity.

One should note that those reviewers who critisized Highet's THE ART OF TEACHING actually betrayed their own lack of knowledge and intellectual inadequacies. Anyone who has a sense of self respect and is knowledgeable can appreciate this book. Anyone who is intellectually shallow and not appreciate bona fide knowledge will not appreciate this book. If this seems harsh, so be it.