You Don't Know Yet

When I was in college, all I wanted out of life was to teach physics.  My degree plan involved a lot of biology, chemistry, and even earth science.  I didn't want to take these classes because I just wanted to teach physics.  Many professors and advisors told me that there were no jobs in which I would spend my entire day teaching physics and that I would need other qualifications to be marketable.  I was, of course, compliant, but I didn't truly believe them.  I really thought I did not need these other courses.  People who knew what they were talking about were sharing wisdom, but my 19-year-old self thought I knew better.  I was, of course, incorrect.  I didn't know what I needed to know yet.

A few years ago, a student came to me to complain about a teacher.  In the midst of the conversation, he said, "He asks questions on his tests that aren't important."  My response was, "I'm sorry, but you aren't qualified to know that."  He looked at me like I had stepped out of a UFO.  He couldn't imagine that he didn't have the perspective he needed to make that kind of judgment.  The man he was talking about had been teaching for over a decade and knew exactly what he needed to teach freshmen to prepare them for the next level of learning.  The freshman was incorrect, not because he wasn't smart, but because he didn't know what he needed to know yet.

Every day, people on social media express very strong and uninformed opinions on everything from virology to politics to nutrition.  People with actual knowledge make vain attempts to educate, but social media makes 7th-graders of us all; so those posts are met with the idea that one person's ignorance is equal to another person's knowledge.  They do not know what they need to know; and, apparently, they don't want to know.

We have all had experiences like the ones described above.  I now look back on my anatomy class as one of the most valuable classes I've ever taken.  The first job I had after college was teaching the very earth science class I had looked down on just two years earlier.  Yet, we walk around all day believing that we have a full view of things when we do not yet know what we need to know.  

Allow the experiences in which you have had clearer hindsight to give you humility - to recognize that you may need to reach out to an expert to find out the information you need - to be open to changing your mind when new information becomes available - to recognize that what seems useless now may turn out to valuable later.  

Teachers, share experiences with your students so they can see that limited perspective leads to poor judgment.  Teach them to seek expert advice, and show them how to judge the difference between credible information and the first result on Google.  Teach them to listen to those whose experience is different from their own.  Help them recognize that they don't know what they don't know and that doesn't mean they are stupid.  Rather it means they are uninformed and can become informed with a little humility.