I always tell my students: if a teacher’s job were merely to load you up with a sum of facts and concepts, a book would do it better.
What’s more, a bad teacher often turns out to be more useful than a good one. You get used to a good teacher, you become hooked on him: he’ll explain everything, lay it all out neatly. But the goal of learning is to become independent. A bad teacher, on the other hand, puts you in front of a simple choice: you have to pass the exam, and he hasn’t really explained anything. So you’ll have to open the book and put your own brain to work. And that sometimes turns out to be a rather valuable experience.
But in a certain sense a good teacher is utterly irreplaceable — and neither books, nor video courses, nor even artificial intelligence will replace him. It isn’t that he conveys some special knowledge. A good teacher knows how to ignite an interest in the subject, to show that behind the formulas, facts, and definitions lies a living and fascinating world. And it is precisely this that sometimes shapes a person’s entire future life.
