What we get wrong about teaching

Some essays linger in the mind because they give shape to questions we have carried for years but have struggled to put into words. This was my experience when I read Shafiq R. Bhuiyan’s essay, “Teaching needs pedagogical skills, not just subject knowledge,” online in The Daily Star on World Teachers’ Day. At first glance, the argument seems simple and familiar. It is not enough for a teacher to know what they teach. They must also know how to teach it. Yet as I read Bhuiyan’s essay, I realized that this seemingly simple idea points to a deeper question about education and the meaning of being a teacher.

As teachers, it is easy to think that our most important asset is our knowledge. If we teach Filipino, we are expected to be knowledgeable in language and literature. If we teach mathematics, we need to understand its concepts and processes. If we teach science, we need to know the principles and information that make up the discipline. This is only logical. How can we teach something we do not know? Yet the longer we spend in the classroom, the more we recognize the significant gap between knowing something and being able to help another person understand it.

This is one of the points that stayed with me in Bhuiyan’s essay. He refers to a scene from the film 3 Idiots that illustrates the difference between knowing a subject and knowing how to teach it. A professor may know engineering, but that does not automatically mean he knows how to make engineering understandable to his students. A teacher’s knowledge is not, by itself, teaching. It has to be translated into forms that learners can receive, understand, question, examine, and apply.

This is where I see the real difficulty of teaching. It is easy to give an answer when we already know the answer. It is much harder to ask why a student cannot see it. When a student fails to answer a question, we can say that the student did not study. We can assume that the student is weak. We can repeat the same explanation more loudly, more slowly, or more frequently. But the problem may not always be the student. The student may not have understood the concept behind the question. There may be a learning gap from a previous lesson. Our example may be too abstract. The student may be afraid of making a mistake. Or the same concept may simply need to be explained in another way.

This is where pedagogy becomes important. A teacher is not merely a transmitter of information. A teacher is also a reader of students. We read their silences, wrong answers, hesitation, questions, and sometimes even their lack of questions. There are moments when the most important things that happen in a classroom are not found in the lesson plan. They can be seen in the face of a student who suddenly understands something. They can also be seen in the student who has remained silent for a long time but finally finds the courage to speak.

The longer I teach, the more I understand that the teacher who speaks most effectively is not always the teacher who teaches most effectively. Neither is the teacher with the widest range of knowledge necessarily the most influential. Some teachers do not need to demonstrate how much they know. Their strength lies in their ability to make difficult ideas simple, distant concepts accessible, and seemingly impossible tasks attainable for their students.

Teaching requires a particular kind of humility. We have to accept that even when a concept is perfectly clear to us, it may not be clear to our students. When they fail to understand, it is not enough to say that we have already explained the lesson. The question is not only whether we have taught the lesson. The more important question is whether the student has learned.

This also made me reflect on my own experience as a teacher. There are times when I leave a class feeling that everything went well. I explained the lesson. I completed the activities. I finished my presentation. But when I look back, I realize that teaching is not about how well the teacher performed. The more meaningful measure is what happened in the minds of the students after the class. Did something change? Did they understand something they had not understood before? Did a new question emerge? Did they become more willing to confront a concept they once found intimidating?

From this perspective, reflection becomes an essential part of a teacher’s work. Our responsibility does not end when the class ends. In many ways, that is when the deeper examination begins. What worked? What did not? Who understood? Who was left behind? Who remained silent? What can I change next time? These questions do not mean that we are inadequate teachers. They indicate that we take teaching seriously and recognize that classroom practice must continually be examined and improved.

Another important point in Bhuiyan’s essay is his discussion of Singapore and Finland, where teacher preparation is not limited to academic knowledge but also includes pedagogical studies, teaching practice, supervision, classroom management, assessment, and continuing professional development. This does not mean that we should simply copy their systems. Our contexts, resources, cultures, and educational realities are different. What matters is the principle behind these examples. Teaching is a profession that requires preparation, training, practice, evaluation, and continuous learning.

This point becomes especially important in education systems where subject expertise may receive greater attention than pedagogical preparation. Expertise in a discipline is an essential foundation, but it does not automatically create the ability to teach. Knowing a concept and designing an experience through which another person can learn that concept are different skills. Answering a question is different from creating a question that enables a student to think.

The challenge has become even clearer today. Teachers no longer have a monopoly on information. With a cellphone, a student can find a definition, video lecture, tutorial, translation, example, or explanation within seconds. If information is all a student needs, there is no longer a reason to wait for the next class. The question, then, is what remains for the teacher.

A great deal remains.

We can still help students learn how to think. We can teach them to question what they read and determine whether the information they encounter is reliable. We can help them connect concepts to their own lives. We can challenge them not to believe something simply because it appeared online. We can teach them to compare sources, recognize context, question information, and develop their own positions. Most importantly, we can create a space where they feel safe enough to make mistakes, ask questions, change their minds, and try again.

This is where I see an important distinction between a teacher and a search engine. A search engine can provide an answer. A teacher can help a student understand why the question matters, how the answer should be examined, and what can be done with the knowledge that has been gained.

In the end, Shafiq R. Bhuiyan’s essay is not only about pedagogical skills. For me, it raises a larger question: What does it mean to be a teacher? As we continue teaching, we also need to continue examining and deepening our own understanding of what teaching means.

It is not enough to know. We have to learn how to teach. Beyond that, we have to learn how to recognize the person in front of us. Every student has a different pace of learning, different fears, different experiences, different ways of understanding, and different reasons for being in our classroom. We cannot assume that because something is clear to us, it will automatically be clear to them.

A good student knows how to learn. A good teacher, however, must learn how to cultivate learning in others. This makes teaching a demanding profession. It asks us not only to become experts in our subjects but also to become observant, critical, humble, and willing to change our methods when they no longer work.

The longer we teach, the more we understand that a teacher’s true expertise is not measured simply by the amount of knowledge they possess. It is measured by their ability to find different ways for that knowledge to reach a mind different from their own. A teacher is not merely a carrier of information. A teacher connects knowledge and experience, questions and understanding, mistakes and learning.

Teaching, in its simplest sense, is not the transfer of what we know. It is the work of helping another person develop their own way of knowing, understanding, examining, and questioning the world.

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Noel Galon de Leon is a writer and professor at the University of the Philippines Visayas, where he teaches in the Division of Professional Education and at UP High School in Iloilo. He is also the Secretary of the National Commission for Culture and the Arts-National Committee on Literary Arts.