does teaching require intelligence?

[plantgirl]

While I'm at posting links, here's an article on how meerkats teach their young to hunt scorpions. Warning to any teachers & psychologists who read it - they claim their research is "challenging the idea that teaching is built on intelligence."

"People used to think of teaching as a clever behaviour," says Alex Thornton of the University of

Comments

[plantgirl]

I read it as saying that in order to teach someone, you need to know what they already know, so you can figure out what they don't know, so you can figure out what to teach them.

In other words, teaching requires the ability to analyze. Otherwise you're just yammering at someone, and that someone may already know what you are yammering about. Or they may not, but the potential for wasted energy is much higher.

I think it is true that teaching requires the ability to analyze.

However, I also think it is true that one can teach, inadvertently, just by demonstrating a behavior and its consequences. Those may be good consequences or bad consequences. Examples? The pigeons or squirrels in the park who get fed, and so all the other pigeons or squirrels scramble around, thinking they'll get food, too (which they often do). Or there's the quote- If you can't be a good example, you'll just have to serve as a horrible warning. That sums up parts of my life.

:)

[poets_hand]

I argue against the stance that humans are more intelligent than animals, anyway. I think we are a very vain species to assume that we are better than 99% of the life forms out there. The other life forms aren't destroying their own burrows, nests, and caves, are they?

[dbmyrrha]

I've been in the biz long enough to recognize that teaching is often based on skill and instinct, rather than intelligence. However, I also know that the "wrong" sort of teacher can teach others how to be pretty stupid.

I try not to be that kind. :)