As the new school year dawns I have been meditating on my profession. I have believed for some time that we do children no favors by talking down to them, even fewer favors by dumbing down the content of what we teach them. If we are "over their heads" we can do it in an aspirational way, helping them desire to be better, smarter, wittier, and more verbose than they currently are. It is a hard line to toe, especially given the disparate intellectual capacities in a given classroom, but it is a goal I find it worth shooting for.
I read the following in T.H. White's excellent Arthurian novel The Once and Future King. It is describing the early days of Arthur's education at the hands of Merlyn.
"The Wart (young Arthur's unpleasant nickname) did not know what Merlyn was talking about, but he liked him to talk. He did not like the grown-ups who talked down to him, but the ones who went on talking in their usual way, leaving him to leap along in their wake, jumping at meanings, guessing, clutching at known words, and chuckling at complicated jokes as they suddenly dawned. He had the glee of a porpoise then, pouring and leaping through strange seas."
This is the goal--to make them reach and to help them delight in so doing.
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