The virtue of ignorance

Every time I arrive at school, I am greeted by an imposing statue of Confucius - 'The Great Teacher', as the Chinese like to call him - presiding over a pond just inside the south gate of our host campus. [Not the one below. Such statues are fairly ubiquitous in China, and further afield across East Asia too. I somehow haven't got around to taking a photograph of ours yet; but it is very similar to this one I just dug up off the Internet.]

The Confucian view of being a teacher would appear to be rather at odds with the more progressive notions of the role that are coming to prevail in the West these days. My experiences, anyway, of working with Chinese students (over more than a decade of living in China now) is that they are brought up to view the 'teacher' as supremely authoritative - indeed, omniscient and infallible. They expect you to know the answer to any and every question thrown at you; and they are shocked and disappointed if you don't. 

Also, unfortunately, they will tend to accept unquestioningly anything their teacher tells them. This, I am sure, is the source of most of the commonest errors in Chinese students' use of English. (One I particularly love/hate, amazingly ubiquitous, is the belief that one "picks up flowers": this is an error propagated for years in a primary school textbook, and Chinese youngsters refuse to believe that it might not be correct English. "It is, if you've dropped your flowers on the floor; but not if you're pulling them out of the ground," I try to explain... usually to greater confusion.)

Hence, during my years of teaching in China, I have come to particularly relish the opportunity to say, in answer to a student's question, "I don't know!"

Indeed, these are some of my favourite moments in the classroom. It's not just a mischievous delight in attempting to dispel this notion of teacherly omniscience among the Chinese. I like putting myself on the same level as my students, breaking down the barriers between us; and beginning to experience a situation from their perspective - wondering how to progress from a point of ignorance to a point of knowledge and understanding.

I love being able to say, "I don't know!" (in fact, I often say it even if I do know, just for the creative thrust it can provide in a class)..... because it naturally prompts a whole series of wonderful follow-up questions.  Not just How can we find out?.... but Can we work it out?.... Can we guess?.... Why might this be important?.... Do we really need to know?.... and so on, an so on.

Saying "I don't know!" is exhilarating, liberating. Give it a try sometime!!