The Art of Teaching

101 aphorisms on teaching in the style of Sun Tzu.

My name is Heinrich Fuchs, and this is my testament. Having taught for thirty-seven years in Ula, a village near Fulda in Hesse, and now being retired and my wife deceased and only daughter far away with her husband and children in Friuli, and therefore having no grandchildren nearby, and this horrible war that has destroyed everything being recently ended, I have decided to commit to page an accumulation of all I know of teaching, hoping it might in some way profit those who come after. 

These precepts are not intended as dogma. My wish is that by recording what I know, when those recordings are found under more thoughtful people’s scrutiny to be flawed, they might thereby still serve as whetstone with which wiser minds might sharpen their own pedagogies. If, in the final analysis of history, everything I offered here were shown to be misguided, or worse, so long as it elicited in defiance a truer statement on the matters of education, I would be happy. 

It is my conviction that education will be of greater import than ever in the coming three-quarters century. For the very world has been upended, and while I believe in the necessity of propaganda in newsprint and the arts as an evil without which nobler voices would be unable to shout back the lies of those who would draw us endlessly into conflicts with our neighbors, I believe that thoughtlessness, no matter how temporarily expedient, has no place in any of our classrooms, and that a teacher’s responsibility is to empower students with not just skills, but autonomous critical faculties, and not to mold them into mouthpieces for their views, even when the teacher’s views are noble.

Had the world known no great catastrophe as it has just barely survived, I would probably still like to write these thoughts down. In a fantasy I have sometimes had, I am not reacting at all to the so-called Great War. I am merely offering the fruits of my experience, and reaping the rich opportunities for self-examination in the grim and lonesome circumstances in which I myself. Still, I cannot deny the appeal of rescuing something meaningful from so much meaningless carnage. It would be a dream realized if reading this re-awakened in any reader, teacher or not, a faith in human potential for goodness that was shattered by the war. 

If my prelude is tedious, it is the result of restlessness about the form my musings take. But before I address the form, let me say that I am not a pacifist. I do not think war itself an absolute abomination. There is such a thing as a good fight, and to refuse to evaluate all conflict on its own terms is to misapprehend the nature of human subjectivity, and to cling to a delusion wherein all human ambitions “must” coalign with one’s own. No other view, in my opinion, is more arrogant and likelier to amplify animosity even as the surface of such a premise glimmers with the rhetoric of peace. 

Sufficient years ago that I can say with confidence that I had not yet learned the lessons that follow, the student of a local banker and aspiring baron, who, perhaps due to some punishment from his patriarch, found himself in my classroom instead of one of the pricier academies into which he might have otherwise matriculated. This student I shall not name, but his name is unimportant. Once instead of going outside to play, I caught him lingering in the classroom. This was a problem because I liked to have the classroom to myself for calisthenics while the children were outside, and I must admit I was too embarrassed to exercise with a student in the room, and so I snapped at him: “Why are you not outside with the others?” 

This young boy, being of far finer origin than I, sneered and left. That was when I saw the book in his hand and deduced that he had wanted to stay inside and to read it so he would not be teased by his classmates. Certain it would be some contemptible pirate story or a volume of pornographical cartoons, I blocked his path and asked after the contents of the book. He claimed it contained the writings of a Chinese philosopher and military commander by the name of Sun Tzu. I laughed at first, thinking he was ridiculing me, as it would be unlikely that a young man in Hesse not thirteen would be reading a book by any philosopher, let alone one from the East. He turned bright red at my laughter. I told him to stop lying and demanded he surrender the book before I flogged him. His anger smoldered, then he slowly relinquished the book. I admit I took it with a tinge of trepidation. If it was indeed full of dirty pictures, I didn’t want to embarrass myself in front of the student. I turned to the side and examined it. 

The book had nothing on the cover, but inside, the title page read The Art of War by Sun Tzu, and then followed a list of editions and translators. While I know now it is a famous book in certain circles, at the time I’d not heard of it. Upon flipping through it I was struck rather by its poetry than its content. Each strikingly succinct line offered a remarkably insightful dictum about strategy, tactics, or other of warfare’s concerns. Today the book can be found at any large library, but I wish to convey how quickly it absorbed me, and how great an impression each edification of strategy or philosophy made upon me. There is no better way to do this than with a quotation. The following is from the section on marching armies, translated into German by a Dutchman Samuël Dijk, published in 1894 by the University of Fribourg: 

Intimations of peace without sworn alliances signal a trap.

Disordered soldiers suddenly falling into orderly lines signals imminent battle.

Some soldiers advancing while others are retreating signals a trap. 

Soldiers resting against their own weapons signal starvation in their camp. 

Soldiers sent to retrieve water but who drink themselves before filling their company’s casks signal that their company is suffering from thirst. 

Enemy forces seeing an advantage but making no effort to take it signal that their soldiers are exhausted. 

Anywhere there are birds, are no soldiers hiding.

In all my life I had never wanted to be a soldier; yet the book so immediately captivated me that the boy cleared his throat, and I looked up at him. I had forgotten him standing there. I snapped and pointed outside. He said something to the effect of, “And my book?” I told him I’d return it by day’s end. 

For the rest of the recess, I read it in my classroom instead of doing calisthenics. I returned the book as promised, but only several days later, after I’d found the book at the library in Fulda. When I had read it several times, I decided I wanted to buy it. I traveled all the way to Frankfurt and ordered it at the bookshop there. It took months for it to arrive, and so I traveled back to Frankfurt when it had. Over the years I reread it tirelessly, each time discovering nuances in Master Tzu’s sayings I hadn’t understood before. It took me many years and readings to understand the marvelous paradox at the core of these writings: it is each observation’s compression that allows it to resonate with relevancy far beyond the battlefield. 

Upon retirement from my duties as a teacher, and having never written much myself, and having transformed much since the pedantic and unimaginative early days of my career on display in the forthgoing anecdote, and deciding to commit all I know to the page, and perhaps having no faith in any European forms of knowledge any longer, having seen all of them fail so comprehensively to stave off self-annihilation, I have harkened back to the form employed by Master Tzu, which has lasted for twenty five centuries, and sustained me intellectually for thirty years.

The treatise that follows is also a tribute to the boy whose name I have withheld, who was wiser than I was at twice his age, and who during the recent terrors gained prominence as an artillery commander and who is now a minister in the fledgling German Republic.

Heinrich Fuchs
Ula, Hesse
31 January 1921

Die Kunst des Lehrens / “The Art of Teaching”

A student who is looking at you but not listening soon intends to speak. 

A student looking away but listening wishes to apply their learning beyond the scope of instruction. 

A student looking at something in their hands surreptitiously is not listening.

A student looking at something in their hands openly is listening but wishes to understand why the lesson matters.

A student who offers no excuse for being late is unashamed of the reason for their lateness. 

A student who offers an excuse for tardiness in advance of being asked is lying about why they are tardy. 

A student whose eyes drift down when speaking is ashamed.

A student whose eyes drift upward when explaining why they are late or why their assignments are late is lying. 

A student whose eyes drift upward while answering a question related to the lesson is improvising a response. 

A student who holds eye contact while answering a question related to the lesson is reciting an answer without reflecting on what it means. 

A student whose eyes never blink when speaking is under great pressure at home.

A student who eats food openly during a lesson wishes to isolate themselves from the other students.

A student who cries upon receiving mediocre marks is wealthy. 

Students whose fears of social rejection remain unaddressed will remain unreceptive to the most sophisticated instruction.

When a dog dies, no one remembers what it barked at.  

The manner of instruction, not the subject, is all anyone remembers. 

A parent weeps at a child’s indolence, and the child learns self-pity (instead of diligence).

A parent strikes a disobedient child, and the child learns violence (instead of obedience).

A disorganized lesson that yields an unexpected climax is easier to remember than a monotonous lesson elegantly arranged.

A classroom is a fish bowl, but each student is, to his or her own mind, the only one who is not a fish, but is a human standing outside the bowl, looking at the fish. 

If an amputee is trapped in a well, lowering a ladder is crueler than singing a song. 

Tell a bird that has never left its nest that it knows nothing beyond the nest, and it will never have the courage to fly. 

Time in the classroom is too short to spend any time teaching students things that life will teach them soon enough.

A classroom exactly like the world could be torn down and nothing would be lost; the classroom must be different than the world. 

A teacher trying to change the world is soon too exhausted to teach. 

Teaching is futile, but the alternative is fatal.

The oasis may expand, the oasis may shrink, or the oasis may disappear, but the rest of the desert never changes. 

Teaching is as difficult as redirecting the wind with your hands. 

Expecting modest results from your students and being astounded when they exceed them is the only way to thwart the lassitude that sets in when they fail to meet expectations you’ve set too high.

The teacher is the role and not the person doing the teaching.

A bird who knows it will die and the world will be no different has a greater chance of flying through a storm.

Teaching should feel like graciously arming one’s own eventual opponent. 

Teach your brightest modesty and your dimmest faith in themselves.

When the teacher has faith in themselves, the student has faith in the teacher, and when the teacher dies, the student seeks a new teacher. 

When the teacher has faith in the student, the student has faith in the student, and when the teacher dies, the student becomes the teacher and seeks students. 

Offered a ceremonial victory, a contentious student will surrender any point.

Manipulate students with evaluations in exchange for their attention, and you have lost nothing and gained everything. 

Only students should believe evaluations to be an end in themselves.  

The tree grows toward the sun, but fruit only falls. 

The highest mark of a successful teacher is when his or her students fruitfully depart from the paths of their instruction.

A teacher learns more in the first ten seconds of a lesson than in nine months of preparation. 

When the eagle dives, trigonometric acumen is of less value than open eyes.

No river is straight on its way to the sea, but no river ever makes a circle. 

Let yourself err, but let no error replicate.

Confer agency upon a student’s intellect, and you will teach them things you could not even know.

Persuade the snake that sneaks into the nest that it too is a bird, and it will remove itself when it attempts to fly.

Those who lose faith in teaching need only continue teaching until it returns. 

The weather never stops, even if it never changes.

No teacher can escape setting some moral example. 

When asked by students to hold class outside, tell the students that you will gladly hold class outside if any can guess why you never do. If the students guess there are too many distractions outdoors, tell them it’s because no one’s voice can carry. If students guess that it’s because no one’s voice can carry, explain that it’s because there are too many distractions outdoors. 

When in dispute with a group of pupils, tell them you will gladly surrender if they prove themselves right and you wrong. If they prove themselves right with a clever argument, repudiate their lack of ethics. If they prove themselves right with an ethical appeal, repudiate their naïveté. If they prove themselves both clever and ethical, surrender the point.

To those with eyes closed, music is a fitter metaphor for flight than how birds move. 

To those who do not listen, a bird in flight is a better metaphor for music than notes and chords.

Material otherwise mysterious and irrelevant to your students, channeled through a metaphor that flatters their longings, becomes intellectually irresistible. 

 “Literature is a plague of bores suffocating free minds with empty opinions…” might, for example, appeal to those frustrated by literature. 

“Those to whom arithmetic comes easy, no one likes. Those to whom arithmetic is dull, become poor. Those to whom arithmetic is amusing, soon become wealthy . . .” might, for example, appeal to those frustrated by arithmetic.

A bad teacher will stoop to being inhumane if it serves the lesson.  

A snake contains more nourishment than a worm, but the robin never brings one to its hatchlings. 

The form knowledge takes upon its arrival determines if it is learned. 

A student’s mind is like a thirsty person surrounded by water. To give them a cup is more important than giving them more water. 

A teacher who threatens a student reveals weakness.

A teacher who flatters a student convincingly is invincible. 

There is no glory or money in teaching, thankfully; it would otherwise attract those one finds in business and in the military. 

If without a school the teacher would still teach, the teacher is a teacher. If without a school the teacher would not teach, the teacher is but a parochial instrument of the state.

Teaching everything leaves no room for the student to learn anything. 

The moment of learning usually comes long after the moment of teaching. 

To teach is to drop a rock into a pool. Learning is not the sound or the splash, nor even the radiating ripples, but when the ripples reach the distant bank, and the rushes rattle.

A teacher’s speech plants the seed, but a teacher’s silence is the sunlight. 

In the wake of having said anything worth saying, be slow to say anything more.

A student who breaks into tears unexpectedly while arguing against the lesson is someone whose dreams have never been given enough space in which to unfold. 

Strident rejection of any student idea, even if it is ludicrous, models dogmatism.

Pretending to entertain all ideas, even ludicrous ones, models curiosity, and lets students observe the folly of fallible ideas in the convincing fantasy of your pretense. 

Even when your students are wrong, modeling listening is the only inoculant against needless war.

If wealthy students are wrong, but ardent, tell them they are right, and pause, and then tell them that childhood ends when there cease to be rewards for being right.

If poor students are wrong, but ardent, tell them they are wrong, but reward them for being ardent. 

The light heats the world and sends the wind around, but no one remembers the light when they feel the wind. 

Earth is many times smaller than the sun, yet only the Earth has stories. Even so, all the stories of Earth are also stories of the sun.  

The greater the acknowledgement of one’s influence, the more subject to corruption one’s teachings.

A teacher who overshadows his or her students is the idol of a cult. 

True teaching lies in maximizing one’s own influence while minimizing one’s own acknowledgment for the results. 

Every student is born, lives, and will die, which makes a story. 

Teach so that you make the story happier in its entirety, not merely in the chapter in which you are a supporting character. 

When the evils of the past are preserved, they are controlled, and when they are controlled, they cannot dominate. When the evils of the past are erased, they are freed from control. 

A self-aware eulogy for ignorance presents more persuasively the case for education than a blinkered paean to knowledge. 

Grief is a blindfold for the intellect. An aggrieved instructor misinstructs in ways they cannot discern; but a teacher who denies their own grief widens the blindfold beyond the intellect to cover heart and soul.

Literature is beautiful to those whom it frees, but be sensitive to this fact: there are many whom it has not freed.

To one, the moon is twice the size of the largest nation; to another it is half the size of an adult thumbnail. 

Do not fall so in love with your subject that you are no longer able to see it through your students’ eyes. 

It is dangerous to commit to an untrue façade, but it is disastrous to deny the many true façade to which every self is pre-committed.

The first half of a course is a dream of wisdom into which pupils must be lulled. 

The second half is a dream from which they must be gently shaken. 

Knowledge is a mansion, its subjects are its rooms, and history its painted walls. 

Show your students all the doors you know, and encourage them to make more, not repaint the walls. 

Imagination and authenticity compete, constraining the breadth and endurance of every lesson.

Don no mask and authenticity blossoms, but the lesson remains constrained by the pupil's imagination, which may be altogether limited. In such cases, small lessons serve best.

Don a mask and you expand the imaginative capacity of the student, allowing larger lessons but undercutting authenticity, in which case the lesson may not endure.

Wearing your mask outside the classroom increases its authenticity in the classroom, but you risk becoming the mask.

A teacher has eyes on the back of his or her head — not to surveil the class when his or her back is turned — but to see the past.

A teacher who knows too many things knows not what to say first or last.

A teacher who truly knows one thing well can say it many ways in any order.

The strongest man in the world cannot throw a feather very far.