POETS UNITED - TEACHERS

“Personally I’m always ready to learn, although I do not always like being taught.” - Sir Winston Churchill

Poets United this week celebrates World Teachers’ Day, held annually on October 5 since 1994. Its aim is to mobilize support for teachers and to ensure that the needs of future generations will continue to be met by teachers. The challenge is to: “Bring a great teacher memory to life in a new poem. Or, if you don’t have one, use learning as your motif…”

Having been a teacher in my professional life, I can surely appreciate the benefits of good teaching when it generates deep and active learning. However, I have also seen some very bad teaching, which unfortunately can have the opposite result from what it intends to do. Education can happen in the most unexpected and delightful ways – a good teacher can facilitate this process of discovery and learning. A poor teacher shovels education into students as though they were empty vessels to be filled with facts, figures, dates and minutiae to be memorised and recalled parrot fashion. What use is to me to know how far away from the earth the moon is and what its precise diameter is, if I cannot appreciate a poem about the magic of moonlight?



Encounter

When we shall meet again

Let’s close our eyes, imagining

The moon as it used to be –

Distant, mysterious, full of hidden promises.

Let us forget bitter realities

Taught to us by our experience,

Throw to the winds the empty facts,

Taught to us by our zealous, short-sighted teachers.

Once more let us believe that

All is possible, all may happen;

Let us regain that most precious of things

That we have lost – Moonlight...