When you're doing a presentation or otherwise introducing a concept, always explain why.
It shows respect for people. It encourages involvement, and therefore commitment. It emphasises that understanding why is just as important as, if not more important than, understanding what or how. It emphasises that if why changes, so should what and how.
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Someone I know was telling me a story about her husband. When their son expressed confusion about why his toy car flys off when he spins in a circle, he's the kind of father that goes into an explanation of centripetal force, inertia, etc.
Another story.
At the mall, a boy accidentally triggers the store alarm when the clothing gets too close to a store security sensor. The boy doesn't understand how that works and asks his father what's going on. The father responds: "It's magic."
Arghh!
So our protaganist walks over there and tells the boy how it actually works.
...
Respect all people, including and perhaps especially children. Respect anyone who asks a question about why. As an instructor, a teacher, respect your students by learning why and if you don't actually know, say so and then find out.
"It's magic", "Just trust me", "That's just the way it is"... those phrases are simply disrespectful.
Deming said: "There's no substitute for knowledge"
I say: "There's no substitute for sharing knowledge"
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3 comments:
Great point, and becomes increasingly more important someone moves further along in their career path.
I would agree with this approach in spirit but there's some differences in the meaningfulness of answer you can give. Explaining physics to a 4 year old is pointless and only going to confuse him. Shaping your response to something that makes sense in his world is much better. Indeed, "it's magic" is a great response to the young child. However, there is a difference between 'trust me' and 'the sky fairies painted it blue'. If you don't give an answer that means something to the asker then you are being disrespectful.
Another note on the example of intervening with someone else's kid. I would be greatly offended if someone came up with my 4 year old and rebuffed my answer to something with a deeply technical explanation appropriate for a 16 year old. Regardless of whether you agree or not, respecting how someone raises their child (parent style) is more important.
Extending this example to adults, there are some answers that will go over the head of the asker. Giving a complicated, low level description of some computer process to a business type is also disrespectful as he won't get it and will probably be confused and possibly offended. Using language that he understands is better.
We recently had a lunar eclipse and a colleague of mine told me how she was able to explain the basic mechanics of how it works to a 2 year old. He understood it well enough to predict in general what would happen next (i.e., where the light would appear).
Yes, the teaching approach should vary for the student, but that's not equivalent to the "it's magic" cop-out.
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