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Showing posts with the label Explaining knowledge bad teaching

Bad at Explaining Things

When it comes to explaining concepts and ideas to others, we Indians are pretty bad. I’ve wondered why that is so. One reason is ignorance. The person trying to explain or teach doesn’t understand the concept himself! But obviously, that can’t be true about everyone. How about the people who do understand the idea? Maybe they don’t want to explain . (Only) I know; therefore I am promoted, get bigger hikes and command respect . Knowledge is power. And withholding knowledge confers even greater power. For others, the reason is pettiness: when I struggled to comprehend something, why then should others get an easy ride to enlightenment? But I feel that the biggest reason is that most people have no idea how to explain things well! Why’s that? Because we almost never learnt from good text books at school. Rarely had great teachers who could explain concepts well. Most of us just learnt by rote in school and college. But that just pushes the question one level back. Why ar