Although I may not be great at it, one of my passion is teaching. Actually, that's not exactly it... My real passion is being able to help others and teaching just happens to be one way of fulfilling that passion. I don't know if I would want to (or could) be teaching professionally, but I believe teaching is a skill that any self-respecting future dad needs to master. As any loving dad would feel, I want my child/ren to be able to live life leveraging on everything that I've learned so that they'd be wiser than I was at their age. The hard part is that I can't just shove all I know down their throat. If you're like most intelligent people with lots of ideas you'd like to share, you'll be so eager to teach everything you know that you'll just get frustrated when others don't learn them instantly. It isn't until the moment you realize you can't just expect them to digest your knowledge instantly that you start spending lots of time thinking about the most effective ways of teaching.

So far, the hardest thing I've learned about teaching is that teaching has to ultimately work alongside time. I don't necessarily mean that something that took you 10 years to learn will take your child the same amount. What it really seems to boil down to is that the best way a person learns is by first-hand realization. The good old saying about how learning by doing is the best way is just a much more simplified way of saying the same thing. Now, why does it matter when somebody learns something? From what I can tell it's because at different stages of life, people are in different states of mind built on top of previous experiences and learnings, and some teachings don't ring a bell until you've fulfilled certain prerequisites. That prerequisite may even actually mean doing exactly what you're not supposed to do and ultimately failing. So the trick is to have patience and lead your student along a path so that they will eventually be able to realize for themselves what you want to teach them. Of course it would be nice to accomplish that without them having to go through all the failures you had gone through, but sometimes there simply are no shortcuts. As abstract as all this may sound, it's even harder to come to grips with what all this actually entails and to practice accordingly. Given the modern society filled with promises for quick fixes and instant gratifications, it's that much harder to take the time (as in 10s of years) to lead your child/ren to a path of learning by realizing.

What most people like me end up doing in their earliy ages of teaching is preaching. As far as I'm concerned, preaching is the easiest way of teaching the most advanced of ideas. Advanced in the sense that the concept conveyed by preaching (assuming that the teaching is indeed valid) will only be learned by people who have already fulfilled all required prerequisites and are "ready" to learn the subject. It is the easiest way of teching in the sense that there's no real method to it other than telling it like it is. Of course it'll have to be supported by logic, reason, examples, empirical proof, and perhaps solid philosophy inspired by other great thinkers. To the unprepared, preaching will not work at all. Actually it may even provoke feelings against the preachings. To the prepared, it will strike a chord in a big way or at least motivate them to ponder on the thought and decide for themselves how to digest it. It's really sad how many college professors simply don't bother going beyond preaching when it comes to the art of teaching. Sure... the students (especially at the graduate level) are expected to have fulfilled all the prerequisites so that they are ready to learn via other's preachings, but on the other hand, preaching can really rub people the wrong way. More often than not you come across as an arrogant and pedantic pighead. Naturally the studens will simply get defensive or may even be offended by your thoughts. So I don't know why some professors don't bother trying to learn other ways of teaching... I really believe good teachers have to first be great students.

Phew... You know... when I do arrive at a point in my life when I feel the desire to settle down and raise a family, I seriously want to become a good dad.