My journey within has brought me to understand more deeply about the economics of teaching and learning. Our current economic structure requires payment in monetary terms in exchange for teaching. This solution is actually quite elegant, as it avoids the uncertain non-monetary payments e.g. do I take the teacher out for dinner or get him a gift etc to show my appreciation? Money seems to be easier. Yet, in exchange of that, I witnessed a student who required a high “return on investment”.
I believe there is an expectation to learn something once you have paid for something. That is how a school does it. That is how a university does it. That is why an MBA course can charge so much for it. Unfortunately, whether you actually learn something is another matter. So what do you do in such an instance? What do you do to prove that you have actually learnt something? Exams is an obvious answer. A form of test. What I don’t see often, is a form of test to check whether a student is ready to learn, i.e. has the student earn the right to learn?
To put this into context, let me explain what I witnessed.
A student was at every instant asking the teacher to point out his errors. To this student, the teacher must always be giving tips. This method is rather unfair in a group setting but the teacher always obliges. It is only later that I understood why. In a group setting, whenever you’re teaching one, it’s never for that one. It’s for everyone.
Unfortunately, after a few weeks of such “taunting”, the teacher did crack. The student has not progressed from previous weeks’ pointers but wanted more. From my point of view, the student has not earned the right to learn anything, as his cup is overflowing with his ego. In his mind, he thinks he can absorb anything the teacher throws at him, and that was what made the teacher ignored him eventually.
To let you know how strong his ego is, after one lesson with the teacher in push hands, he started “guiding” other students, saying how relaxed he is and how stiff the others were and they should relax like him. He is no where near relaxed…
I guess the point is this. Price is what you pay. Value is what you get. They are rarely equal. Once you have paid your price, you can never change the price that you paid. But you can change the value that you can receive. If you are not prepared to receive any value, you will not get any, no matter how high a price you have paid. If you paid me $1 million dollars, I might fake it and say you have learnt something, but you will know the real deal. Come to think of it, maybe not. With a full cup, it’s hard that you will ever know the real deal.
Drop the ego. Smash the cup. Or pay the price.
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