kyle E. Albarado

In The Art of Teaching, Gilbert Highet writes on the methods of teaching and the general principles that underlie any subject being well-taught. Hinted in the title, Highet is firmly convicted (and firmly defends) teaching as an art. The work is almost impossible to summarize given his insights, anecdotes, and talent as a story teller. I will boldly attempt such a summary with the following idea: the art of teaching is found in the teacher’s love for truth, the teacher’s love for their pupils, and the teacher’s willingness to mediate between these loves.

Andrew Kern recommended this book when he visited JPG during the in-service for the 2021-2022 school year. I was hesitant to read it at first due to the cover. Although it is said that one ought not judge a book by its cover, a wise man once successfully argued the opposite. But the cover of his book looked like this.

Thankfully, I threw caution to the wind and began a great conversation with Highet about how to become an artful teacher. One of the excerpts from the book that I often return to is about what Highet calls “the two most difficult of the teacher’s problems” in his presentation of the tutoring method.

In music, for example, a teacher may very well start his pupil with the elements-reading the notes, singing in simple scale, hitting the basic rhythms-and may carry her through progressively difficult exercises, week by week, planned to train her in breathing, tone-control, rapidity of utterance, and richness of overtones, while avoiding or eliminating the too numerous vices of young singers-blaring, trembling, hooting, and panting. Easy songs will be followed by longer and more complex ones, until at last, years later than the first lesson, he will be teaching her a group of Ravel songs and an entire part from The Magic Flute. (Yet he himself may not be a singer at all, far less a coloratura soprano.) If he manages this successfully, he will be a fine teacher. He will have solved the two most difficult of the teacher’s problems, which are to plan the complete development of a single individual’s learning, from beginnings to maturity, and to guide the pupil over the inevitable periods of discouragement by pointing back to the ground traversed and forward to the hopeful future.

The Art of Teaching, Highet (1950), 1989 ed., p. 112. Bold added to text for emphasis.

What do you think about the two problems?

Do you agree or disagree that they are the two most difficult problems of a teacher? Why?

How do these two problems affect your daily experience of striving to incarnate the classical, Catholic tradition?

I look forward to our great discussion in the comments.