Self-fulfilling Failure

The other day I made the point that the difficulty of reaching certain students is a problem for the teacher, even though the students themselves (and various cultural influences) may well be to blame. The argument for this goes beyond a merely idiosyncratic, overdeveloped sense of responsibility. Rather, it runs something like this: to stop trying to find ways to reach students generates a self-fulfilling cycle in which you cannot reach them even in principle. Blaming the student, or social attitudes, etc. may place responsibility where it properly belongs, but it also begs the question against your being able to do anything about it.

So one of the commitments of teaching is constantly to be looking for more effective ideas about how to teach the students with whom you are working. Complacency and despair are equally fatal to your craft.