Learning from children
Spanish blogger Natxo Sobrado interviewed me for a provocative piece he wrote for Lenovo’s corporate blog about whether universities would ever accept the idea of children giving classes to adults (link in Spanish).
While no child, I began my teaching career in my very early twenties at IE Business School thanks to the encouragement of the person I consider my professional mentor, lecturing to students taking the Executive MBA, many of whom were older and significantly more experienced than I was. I found that my recent experiences as a student gave me insight into the issues that my students would find interesting. My evaluations were very high, and here I am, still teaching the best part of two decades later.
When IE Business School decided to buy a university and restart it to meet our teaching methods, we were aware that we lacked experience with undergraduates, and so we did what seemed the logical thing: we set up a Junior Advisory Board made up of young people from around the world, and asked them to tell us what they would be looking for when they went to university. This became a powerful source of ideas, many of which have been very successfully applied, setting IE University apart from its peers.
Does this mean that a child could give classes in a university? No doubt about it. It’s a provocative idea, and for that reason very applicable as part of the educational process. As far as I’m concerned, when it comes to learning something new, if it works, don’t knock it. The idea of a child sharing his or her specialist knowledge is an attractive one: I haven’t had the opportunity to bring a child into my classes, but I have certainly given young people the chance to teach me and my students what they know.
That said, I still adhere to the traditional view that teaching a course, with its structure and goals, is best left to professionals. I invite a lot of people to give talks during my classes, but I set the rules, and am always present: this is how I earn my living, and it is my responsibility to make sure that what my guests are talking about fits in with what I am teaching.
This is very much my approach when I compare myself with other institutions where part-time teachers outnumber full-timers. Using the excuse of bringing pupils into contact with reality, people who are not really teachers are brought in to tell about their experiences, but are unable to provide any critical judgment, and typically lacking the structure required to draw any meaningful conclusions. Part-time teachers are no ninjas able to give classes and wield nunchakus while trying to survive a business in crisis; similarly, full-time teachers are not — at least where I work — a bunch of dreamers locked away in ivory towers discussing abstract ideas in congresses with other dreamers.
There is no real reason why a child couldn’t teach at university, but I would think it makes more sense for a minor to be invited as a guest to a series of sessions overseen by a professional. And of course those children or young people could be used to compare and contrast ideas, as a way of learning about what interests them and making sure that we do not distance ourselves from reality.
In any event, I would like to thank Natxo for raising the issue as part of a broader discussion about education, and for giving me the opportunity to contribute (although considering how talkative I am and how much I love the topic, it probably took him many hours to go through his records… apologies! :-)
(En español, aquí)
