teaching

Louis Kahn, the great architect, wrote that the birth of education came when a boy and an old man were sitting under a tree, both sharing experiences and stories with one another. Neither boy nor old man knew what they were doing; their act created the institution of education out of the implicit desire to share, learn, and live together.

Kahn had noted that, in his opinion, most institutions had strayed from this original being. The work of a good architect and teacher is to return to this collaborative vision.

Education is about bringing together teacher and student, the young and the old, the tried and the fresh, together.

Teaching is about having faith and the long-term. To teach one must have a faith in the student’s own mind, abilities and future. One must respect the student’s ability to connect things together, and their ability to do so as an individual person. When a student takes a class, it has the potential to effect them for the rest of their life and any of their own teaching and work, friends and family. Knowledge has the potential to unravel new worlds of insight, spreading deep and far into the future.