Volume 4: Potential Teachers (1952)

Two 1-hour lectures.

In Potential Teachers Rosenstock-Huessy asks the question: “What are the barriers to teaching?” He declares that real learning arises from real life, which is specific, personal, and rooted in a particular time. Learning in a classroom, by contrast, is general and impersonal, and comes either too early or too late (because classes must be arbitrarily scheduled). Because it is difficult to surmount these barriers, the norm is to forsake teaching altogether, and settle for mere training or instruction. Real teaching requires blending different approaches in a natural rhythm that varies from one phase to another: “Learning dies by being taught with only one rhythm.”

These lectures may help listeners who struggle to comprehend Rosenstock-Huessy’s sometimes brusque comments on teaching in other lectures.