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Teaching and Its Predicaments
Ever since Socrates, teaching has been a difficult and even dangerous profession. Why is good teaching such hard work?
In this provocative, witty, and sometimes rueful book, David K. Cohen writes about the predicaments that teachers face. Like therapists, social workers, and pastors, teachers embark on a mission of human improvement. They aim to deepen knowledge, broaden understanding, sharpen skills, and change behavior. One predicament is that no matter how great their expertise, teachers depend on the cooperation and intelligence of their students, yet there is much that students do not know. To teach responsibly, teachers must cultivate a kind of mental double distancing themselves from their own knowledge to understand students’ thinking, yet using their knowledge to guide their teaching. Another predicament is that although attention to students’ thinking improves the chances of learning, it also increases the uncertainty and complexity of the job.
The circumstances in which teachers and students work make a difference. Teachers and students are better able to manage these predicaments if they have resources―common curricula, intelligent assessments, and teacher education tied to both―that support responsible teaching. Yet for most of U.S. history those resources have been in short supply, and many current accountability policies are little help. With a keen eye for the moment-to-moment challenges, Cohen explores what “responsible teaching” can be, the kind of mind reading it seems to demand, and the complex social resources it requires.
In this provocative, witty, and sometimes rueful book, David K. Cohen writes about the predicaments that teachers face. Like therapists, social workers, and pastors, teachers embark on a mission of human improvement. They aim to deepen knowledge, broaden understanding, sharpen skills, and change behavior. One predicament is that no matter how great their expertise, teachers depend on the cooperation and intelligence of their students, yet there is much that students do not know. To teach responsibly, teachers must cultivate a kind of mental double distancing themselves from their own knowledge to understand students’ thinking, yet using their knowledge to guide their teaching. Another predicament is that although attention to students’ thinking improves the chances of learning, it also increases the uncertainty and complexity of the job.
The circumstances in which teachers and students work make a difference. Teachers and students are better able to manage these predicaments if they have resources―common curricula, intelligent assessments, and teacher education tied to both―that support responsible teaching. Yet for most of U.S. history those resources have been in short supply, and many current accountability policies are little help. With a keen eye for the moment-to-moment challenges, Cohen explores what “responsible teaching” can be, the kind of mind reading it seems to demand, and the complex social resources it requires.
- GenresEducationNonfiction
248 pages, Hardcover
First published August 31, 2011
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Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
January 5, 2023
In Elizabeth Green's Building a Better Teacher, she describes David Cohen as an Eeyore to another education reformers' Pooh, and the world might be more sympathetic to Eeyores. They take a dark view but also try to escape their own misgivings and pessimism.
Or, at least, Cohen does. Teaching and Its Predicaments contains many fine observations too numerous and subtle to recount, but one cornerstone is that teachers have much in common with other helping professionals like social workers and psychotherapists. Their success lies only partly in their own effectiveness because they rely on clients' cooperation. They may be extraordinarily hard-working and dedicated, innovative and earnest, talented, even visionary, yet, without a willing subject, they can't exercise the influence they desire.
Like many of Cohen's insights, the implications of this perception are devastating. American education is compulsory. Teachers are increasingly disrespected, increasingly distrusted by the public, politicians, and their own administrators, rendering the profession ever more suspect, ever more written off. In light of Cohen's redefinition of teaching, evaluation on the basis of "results," largely test results, is problematic. As Cohen points out, clumsy teachers with willing, respectful students can appear more effective than brilliant teachers who choose to work with disadvantaged and skeptical students.
Another important distinction in Cohen's thinking is the difference between teaching as an identity and teaching as a practice. Anyone might take up the title "teacher," distributing knowledge and understanding hoping a class is ready to absorb it. The ablest teachers, however, focus on learning rather than teaching, constantly monitoring and reassessing where students are, what misunderstandings learners are likely to encounter, and what "unpacking" of information might best lead them to important discoveries and growth.
The later portions of this book deal quite thoughtfully with the requisite skills of a practicing teacher. Nonetheless, Cohen seems more interested in correcting common misconceptions than he is in wholesale remedies. He recognizes the nearly infinite variables that affect the disappointing performance of American public education. In exposing the predicaments of teachers, he addresses the profession more prescriptively and ruminatively than the easy (and frequently dismissive) accounts proffered by non-educators like Elizabeth Green. Consistent with his method, Cohen offers only contingent solutions.
Cohen's book is thus an antidote to others (like Green's) promising to fix everything about American education. Unfortunately, Cohen's painstaking explanation and demonstration lack the drama a more vehement (and oversimplified) book possesses. Cohen takes up an important subject with brilliant insight. He is a lucid writer. His prose, however, is not at all exciting, and, at times, his subtle discernment of spectral distinctions becomes tediously academic, obsessive.
Which is a shame. Real reform in American education may rest on acknowledging and appreciating the daily dilemmas of teachers as Cohen does. He may be an Eeyore, but he's saying much that needs to be said.
Or, at least, Cohen does. Teaching and Its Predicaments contains many fine observations too numerous and subtle to recount, but one cornerstone is that teachers have much in common with other helping professionals like social workers and psychotherapists. Their success lies only partly in their own effectiveness because they rely on clients' cooperation. They may be extraordinarily hard-working and dedicated, innovative and earnest, talented, even visionary, yet, without a willing subject, they can't exercise the influence they desire.
Like many of Cohen's insights, the implications of this perception are devastating. American education is compulsory. Teachers are increasingly disrespected, increasingly distrusted by the public, politicians, and their own administrators, rendering the profession ever more suspect, ever more written off. In light of Cohen's redefinition of teaching, evaluation on the basis of "results," largely test results, is problematic. As Cohen points out, clumsy teachers with willing, respectful students can appear more effective than brilliant teachers who choose to work with disadvantaged and skeptical students.
Another important distinction in Cohen's thinking is the difference between teaching as an identity and teaching as a practice. Anyone might take up the title "teacher," distributing knowledge and understanding hoping a class is ready to absorb it. The ablest teachers, however, focus on learning rather than teaching, constantly monitoring and reassessing where students are, what misunderstandings learners are likely to encounter, and what "unpacking" of information might best lead them to important discoveries and growth.
The later portions of this book deal quite thoughtfully with the requisite skills of a practicing teacher. Nonetheless, Cohen seems more interested in correcting common misconceptions than he is in wholesale remedies. He recognizes the nearly infinite variables that affect the disappointing performance of American public education. In exposing the predicaments of teachers, he addresses the profession more prescriptively and ruminatively than the easy (and frequently dismissive) accounts proffered by non-educators like Elizabeth Green. Consistent with his method, Cohen offers only contingent solutions.
Cohen's book is thus an antidote to others (like Green's) promising to fix everything about American education. Unfortunately, Cohen's painstaking explanation and demonstration lack the drama a more vehement (and oversimplified) book possesses. Cohen takes up an important subject with brilliant insight. He is a lucid writer. His prose, however, is not at all exciting, and, at times, his subtle discernment of spectral distinctions becomes tediously academic, obsessive.
Which is a shame. Real reform in American education may rest on acknowledging and appreciating the daily dilemmas of teachers as Cohen does. He may be an Eeyore, but he's saying much that needs to be said.
May 6, 2012
Everybody who cares about improving our schools must read this book.
June 29, 2019
while he addresses valid points of teachers operating within an ecology, I find some of his generalizations a bit simplistic. For example, he assigns a hierarchy of values to types of instructional organization from seatwork to discussions, and then how they can vary in quality between viewing knowledge as fixed or as a process of inquiry. These are rather simplistic, one dimensional views that still hold on to the assumptions underlying education today that fails to address the inefficiency and subsequent frustration + burnout of teachers due to energy inefficiently applied.
Briefly, the assumptions are these:
1. That learning a predominantly social, extroverted activity, either through the teacher performing (lecture) information, or the students discussing with each other. (Instead of utilizing self-study/reflection/individual practice etc), and the attendant:
2. that these extroverted activities are so precious they should dominate school time, and students can do the introspective work at home - already a gateway to work/life imbalance as students are not expected to have other responsibilities, activities or their own perogatives at home. (this naturally leads to an inefficient way of using school time as well, as students also feel that they will need to so work after school anyway so why give 100% now in class?)
3. that teachers should always be the main impetus for initiating each activity at every time point during the day. Thus assuming the students do not have to ability or interest in initiating learning activities on their own and finally
4. that when given the opportunity to be mobile without a set task made for them, students will always abuse this privilege, instead of focusing on necessary work, chatting and taking too long breaks.
It is as though school is already a training ground for inefficient workers, who definitely do not deserve a 4-hr work day.
So while this book is synpathetic to the systems under which teachers operate, it is only mildly interested in the students - who are affected not only indirectly via teacher stress, but directly by this framework.
In a way, Cohen’s book is a bit of logic exercise that anyone who has undergone a public education in most countries of sufficient means can begin to puzzle out for themselves (if they have enough interest). I believe he had a lot of fun writing this book. However, he is missing a piece of a puzzle due to his being stuck within this inefficient/nonoptimized framework. This frameworj shift would perhaps come about if he could observe children under an entirely different framework, where his assumptions about what children need and can do are removed. (Indeed, many public school children begin to think of themselves as lacking in agency and academic interest, where life is a constant grind you can just get through so you can to your next Netflix episode or other form of addictive pleasure.).
This alternate environment/framework is Montessori.
Briefly, the assumptions are these:
1. That learning a predominantly social, extroverted activity, either through the teacher performing (lecture) information, or the students discussing with each other. (Instead of utilizing self-study/reflection/individual practice etc), and the attendant:
2. that these extroverted activities are so precious they should dominate school time, and students can do the introspective work at home - already a gateway to work/life imbalance as students are not expected to have other responsibilities, activities or their own perogatives at home. (this naturally leads to an inefficient way of using school time as well, as students also feel that they will need to so work after school anyway so why give 100% now in class?)
3. that teachers should always be the main impetus for initiating each activity at every time point during the day. Thus assuming the students do not have to ability or interest in initiating learning activities on their own and finally
4. that when given the opportunity to be mobile without a set task made for them, students will always abuse this privilege, instead of focusing on necessary work, chatting and taking too long breaks.
It is as though school is already a training ground for inefficient workers, who definitely do not deserve a 4-hr work day.
So while this book is synpathetic to the systems under which teachers operate, it is only mildly interested in the students - who are affected not only indirectly via teacher stress, but directly by this framework.
In a way, Cohen’s book is a bit of logic exercise that anyone who has undergone a public education in most countries of sufficient means can begin to puzzle out for themselves (if they have enough interest). I believe he had a lot of fun writing this book. However, he is missing a piece of a puzzle due to his being stuck within this inefficient/nonoptimized framework. This frameworj shift would perhaps come about if he could observe children under an entirely different framework, where his assumptions about what children need and can do are removed. (Indeed, many public school children begin to think of themselves as lacking in agency and academic interest, where life is a constant grind you can just get through so you can to your next Netflix episode or other form of addictive pleasure.).
This alternate environment/framework is Montessori.
January 7, 2015
There were a lot of times when reading this book where I said "this guy gets it." There were also a lot of times when I said "this guy is too trusting and gullible." A bunch of good ideas but too much trust in charter school organizations to bring about change. I give it three stars for that reason and for a lot of deep, repetitive technical analysis of teaching methods - but there's a lot of helpful wisdom here. Read the first two and last chapters.
January 2, 2022
The predicaments that Cohen elucidates are undeniable and yet, the content of this book left me feeling a bit wanting. Cohen writes about real and pressing problems with how teaching is done, particularly in the USA. He writes about these issues from a generalized view rather than providing many concrete examples. For me, the most interesting issues are those that arise from how teachers go about teaching rather than issues of policy and bureaucracy. While the latter issues are important, I was drawn more to the former. I think I was left wanting because I am accustomed to authors setting up problems so that they can get to the true purpose of their writing, the solutions. Cohen is much heavier on clearly defining what is holding teachers and teaching back and much lighter on what is to be done. This, to me, could have been an embodiment of how Cohen thinks teaching should be done, as a way for teachers to connect to learning. But Cohen neither creates a means for readers to connect their reading to meaningful change, either in themselves or in education infrastructure, nor does he provide much direction on how readers can do so on their own.
Nonetheless, Cohen's book provides outstanding insight into what it means to teach as well as to learn. I highlighted many ideas that I hope to revisit to see if I can integrate them into my thinking about how I do teach and how I could teach.
Nonetheless, Cohen's book provides outstanding insight into what it means to teach as well as to learn. I highlighted many ideas that I hope to revisit to see if I can integrate them into my thinking about how I do teach and how I could teach.
December 11, 2023
This is a long (in my opinion, overly long), subtle book about the art of teaching and its environment. Cohen's primary point is that our education system is simply not organized to help teachers thrive (or even survive in some instances). He links teaching to a whole body of social work in which practitioners attempt to improve the human condition; for teachers, our practice necessitates our students' will and capability to improve. This is one of the key challenges of teaching. Imagine if the woodworker dealt with wood that felt apathy or acted out! It never struck me until reading this book, but when students don't commit to learning, it constrains not just their success but also the success of the teacher. One's ability to grow in one's profession is determined in no small part by student engagement in the endeavor.
Cohen believes that this lack of common structure to teaching is born partly out of America's unique political/historical character: Jeffersonian skepticism toward large government, federalism, local control, and the like. This lack of structure means that teaching has failed to become an institution wherein the experience of skilled practitioners is passed on to novices; there is no framework in place to bind teachers to one another (except in the form of unions, which don't usually put much of an emphasis on instruction and curriculum). For the individual teacher, this may not have been a bad thing; as long as one didn't rock the boat with one's students, a teacher could do basically whatever he or she wanted. However, we can argue that this hasn't been best for students and for society at large. We have placed individual freedom and autonomy over a teacherly community that can support ambitious practice.
Cohen believes that this lack of common structure to teaching is born partly out of America's unique political/historical character: Jeffersonian skepticism toward large government, federalism, local control, and the like. This lack of structure means that teaching has failed to become an institution wherein the experience of skilled practitioners is passed on to novices; there is no framework in place to bind teachers to one another (except in the form of unions, which don't usually put much of an emphasis on instruction and curriculum). For the individual teacher, this may not have been a bad thing; as long as one didn't rock the boat with one's students, a teacher could do basically whatever he or she wanted. However, we can argue that this hasn't been best for students and for society at large. We have placed individual freedom and autonomy over a teacherly community that can support ambitious practice.
December 30, 2024
Cohen’s argument flows from a broad question: can we improve teaching? How?
One of Cohen’s claims is that teaching is a “human improvement” profession. I would add pastors and Christian educators to this list, evidenced by page 18 where he discusses the improvement of the soul.
A major theme in the book is his exploration of three “terrains” where teaching and learning meet: the knowledge teachers share with learners, the organization of instruction, and familiarity with students’ knowledge. Cohen believes that attending to these terrains is one way teaching might be improved.
Cohen notes that even teachers who aspire to constructivist or inquiry-based learning have difficulty implementing it because those models introduce uncertainty in a way that the banking model of education does not. According to Cohen, uncertainty is essential to deep understanding but increases the difficulty of instruction. This succinctly captures the hurdle we face when seeking to improve our volunteers’ teaching skills.
One of Cohen’s claims is that teaching is a “human improvement” profession. I would add pastors and Christian educators to this list, evidenced by page 18 where he discusses the improvement of the soul.
A major theme in the book is his exploration of three “terrains” where teaching and learning meet: the knowledge teachers share with learners, the organization of instruction, and familiarity with students’ knowledge. Cohen believes that attending to these terrains is one way teaching might be improved.
Cohen notes that even teachers who aspire to constructivist or inquiry-based learning have difficulty implementing it because those models introduce uncertainty in a way that the banking model of education does not. According to Cohen, uncertainty is essential to deep understanding but increases the difficulty of instruction. This succinctly captures the hurdle we face when seeking to improve our volunteers’ teaching skills.
June 12, 2017
№19 Книга автора, которого я раньше не читала
То ли я такая начитанная, то ли знаю всё описанное в книге интуитивно...
То ли я такая начитанная, то ли знаю всё описанное в книге интуитивно...
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews