I've just caught, while channel-surfing, another of Fred Dibnah's wonderful programmes about the industrial revolution, which appear happily to be re-circulating on digital channels. Apart from having met Fred casually a couple of times at charity fund-raising events in Bolton Market Square and seeing his LandRover around when we lived in Bolton, I'm a great admirer on two levels;
- his infectious enthusiasm for sheer craftsmanship in the Victorian age in particular, when engineering depended so much on the direct personal skills of craftsmen. (Pardon the implict sexism; women were also very skilled in operating the mchines, but the transience of their contributions is part of the point of this reflection.)
- his skill in communicating it.
There's another kind of craft; that of process. It is by definition ephemeral. It leaves only indirect "products", and we need to infer what went into their making.
Teaching is such a process skill. Its products may be evident, but indirect. Its proof, as a skill, is in ephemeral, moment-to-moment interaction, rather than in the product of the "successful student", because there are so many other factors which influence that "successful" outcome.
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