"Perhaps I should start with a negative learning. It has gradually been driven home to me that I cannot be of help to this troubled person by means of any intellectual or training procedure. No approach which relies upon knowledge, upon training, upon the acceptance of something that is taught, is of any use. These approaches seem so tempting and direct that I have, in the past, tried a great many of them. It is possible to expJain a person to himself, to prescribe steps which should lead him forward, to train hirn in knowledge about a more satisfying mode of life. But such methods are, in my experience, futile and inconsequential. The most they can accomplish is some temporary change, which soon disappears, leaving the individual more than ever convinced of his inadequacy."
(Rogers, 1961, pp 32-33)
The Socrates of Plato's 'Meno' dialogue can be represented as believing that teaching was sometimes about revealing something to the student that they already knew - something they could almost have worked out for themselves, given time and opportunity.
When I find myself trying to explain something to a student, I have to try to inhabit their failure to understand - to see it, in a sense, as rational. This includes trying to see how something that seems obvious to me - something I'm so familiar with that I have forgotten why it might seem puzzling - might not be obvious. I have to kind of 'unlearn' it, in order to enter the student's world.
If I don't do this, I can't pass on anything much better than rote learning - a capacity to recite a rule, or superficially 'perform' a calculation without really understanding it.
In counselling, I find that my confidence that I know something that the client does not - even when the client colludes in this - is often misleading. I think this is part of what Rogers is pointing to.
I can give a student a kind of performative capacity - e.g. to pass an exam, or fit into a repetitive administrative role - without really visiting their failure to understand. But I cannot bring them to any real understanding. In order to do that, I need to stand beside them with a flashlight, so to speak, hoping that we both find something in its beam.
And I must be prepared to be as surprised and informed as they are by the experience.
No matter how many times I have 'taught' something - however apparently trivial or basic - I always learn something new about it with each new attempt. If I don't, then I can generally be sure that the student hasn't either...
Reference:
ROGERS, C.R., 1961. On becoming a person; a therapist's view of psychotherapy. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.
