Tuesday, August 01, 2006

Confucius Was A Bright Man

子曰知之为知之不知为不知是知也。

The Master said, "to see knowledge as knowledge and ignorance as ignorance - this is knowledge."

I shoulda listened to Confucius.

The one thing I'm confident in as a strength in my teaching style is that I usually know when to say, "I don't know that. Let me get back to you on that."

It's always good to do this when you don't know something.

Because when you don't, you may be tempted to suggest that a certain person holds a certain opinion.

And then you may find out that one of your students went to high school with said person.

And said person holds the opposite view.

I shall meditate on the wisdom of ignorance.

2 comments:

sheepish said...

Err... oops.

I've been known to say things like "I'm going to do the thing where I say 'I'll get back to you on that,' except next class is a holiday, and hopefully you will have forgotten the question by the class after that - alleviating the need for me to answer." It goes over surprisingly well.

Overread said...

Ooo... I like that one