Comments on: Why teaching needs to be a form of entertainment

By: Chiara

Chiara — Sat, 20 Feb 2010 10:09:02 +0000

I must be one of the 1% then. Teaching should be interesting. Not just 'here's a funny hat while I talk about boring stuff' (though when you need to talk about boring stuff, perhaps that helps!) but genuinely interesting, content wise. It should be useful. It should be inspiring and life changing. It should be interactive where possible. It should be fun! I'm sure that the important basics can be taught via fun means.

By: aminhotep

aminhotep — Tue, 29 Dec 2009 17:04:19 +0000

Attention and respect are things that teachers have to earn from their students. Which is not easy when the content they are teaching is designed to be lame. Its like a comedian trying to get a laugh with someone else's bad jokes.

Here's why it doesnt work: http://wp.me/ptcfd-1L

By: melvag

melvag — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 09:01:21 +0000

Hi stumbled here, and loved your blog. I'm a teacher here in New Zealand. I so agree with you, if I fail to grab the kids passion for learning it's my fault for not designing a lesson that is interesting, engaging and stretching and allows for the student to lead the learning. Ironically read a site tonight also that was the antithesis of this belief system where a teacher put forward more rote learning and desks in rows. Broke my heart, teaching today needs to be about the student, how do we engage them?

By: Revathi

Revathi — Sat, 22 Aug 2009 03:44:28 +0000

Every one considers education as academic skills whihc is nothing but the left brain abilities. I believe the author believes that education must be entertainment and joyful which can be achieved through right brain education only. As an infant education expert for the past 17 years I believe that the purpose of education can only be achieved through creativity and imagination which are the abilities of most great people like einstein,michael faraday,leonardo d vinci etc.,

By: chinamike

chinamike — Sun, 16 Aug 2009 23:39:05 +0000

My problem with what you are saying is that you focus much too much on the teacher. Education should be driven by learning, not teaching. And learning is at once much, much more complex and satisfying than entertainment.

I think your ideas make sense at a very basic level. On this forum we all believe that class should be fun. But to equate teaching with entertainment is to confuse the job of an educator with the job of a performer. Your jobs are not to perform, so much as turn our students into performers. Our jobs are not to entertain as much as turn our students into curious, self-learners.

IMO your understanding of teachers as entertainers clouds the notion of what we should be doing as teachers and sends good teachers in the wrong direction.

By: mrbaldwin

mrbaldwin — Wed, 12 Aug 2009 19:47:07 +0000

I enjoy your blog. I was directed here by Stumble! as I was drifting around online waiting for September to get here. I hope you keep writing new posts regularly. I see so many people get excited about a new endeavor, like a blog or website or podcasting or wikis and so on. Then, after the “newness” wears off…they update once every 3 months if at all. You are good at this. KEEP IT GOING.

By: Squibbed

Squibbed — Wed, 12 Aug 2009 17:58:36 +0000

I couldn't agree with you more. I teach elementary school in a rural town in Ontario, Canada. It's a low socio-economic area and the kids, particularly the boys, are very disengaged in the learning process. I work my butt off to make as much as I can edu-tainment. I come in in characters (full costume) I teach in various accents and I even record myself so that I can play the lesson I could have done in person as a television show (you'd be surprised how engaged kids are when you do the SAME thing as you would in person, but put it on a screen). I'm no Brad Pitt or Tom Cruise, but maybe I could make some Tim Robbins money…

By: formerhser

formerhser — Sun, 02 Aug 2009 21:15:28 +0000

Entertainment – and how about interactive, too? I hated social studies – except the lone quarter that I learned about India. (Each quarter, we had a different teacher teaching a different part of the world.) This teacher made it interesting, taught us about the culture, how people lived – the part that makes it worth while learning, not just boring, dry, dates and places and wars. The kids all thought he was an “easy” teacher (meaning easy A's) but I saw that he really was just a GOOD teacher, who made the material stick well in all types of brains. I would be willing to be all those “mediocre” students who did will in his class, actually learned the material.

By: Eryk Banatt

Eryk Banatt — Sat, 25 Jul 2009 19:29:23 +0000

Great post! I agree with you completely, there needs to be some sort of entertainment or focus for education to be effective.

By: KirstenWinkler

KirstenWinkler — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 18:08:53 +0000

The best teachers are those who see teaching not as a profession but as a passion. Great post, Cap'n ARR!