Cross-Pollination at Caddickisms
Cross pollination is a beautiful thing. In addition to prompting some folks to recommend Rethinking Worldview and add it to their reading lists, some remarks made in my recent CPYU Bookshelf interview prompted thrills and frustration at Caddickisms, where the question turned on whether my devil-may-care attitude toward accommodating material to the supposed understanding of the audience could apply in corporate training environments: "Challenge students?! Are you crazy?!"
Teaching involves plenty of challenges. If no one understands what you're saying, have you really taught? My own experience has been that they do understand, and that the reason they've tuned out in the past wasn't lack of comprehension so much as lack of interest. That's not to say that after prolonged disengagement some students don't find it difficult to switch back on. But over-simplifying material often results in the impression that what you're teaching is just common sense, and people can only be lectured so many times on things they "already know." Anyway, click on the article and read the link -- it's much more interesting than the quote of mine that inspired it.
