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Personality can't be taught?


You can’t teach someone to care. Teachers that don’t care deeply can’t push through all the barriers to succeed.


Why can't you teach someone to care? Why can't you explain to someone why exactly you care and help them to understand and accept your reasoning?

As an example,there are lots of health care workers that get into it for the money and start caring about patients(and vice versa).

I for example care,I would love the process of teaching but I would be terrible at everything else.

To be a good teacher,the biggest requirement imo is to be a good student. Much like how you need to be a good worker before you become a manager and how you need to be a good soldier before you give orders to other soldiers.

I just think "can't" is too strong of a claim that demands a clear and logical rationale to back it up.


I concur that teachers should be good students, as well as your analogy that managers should be good workers. In both cases it’s necessary but not sufficient.


Not really. Unless you love teaching you will always be a mediocre teacher at best. E.g., most teachers who say "Just google it" or "It is what it is" or "Its beyond the scope of this lecture" are generally not very good teachers. A good teacher is always inquisitive in knowing his/her audience, and formulating strategies to bridge that gap. The best teachers know exactly what the students struggles are, generally because they were in that same position as well. Great teachers formulate 100's of ideas and processes to identify which knowledge is worth telling at that moment, and which should be deferred for later. These same people will plan out exactly what the whiteboard will look like, before even lifting their marker.

I personally am not a great teacher... it doesn't excite me really. Partially because I have had to teach too many people that are not very good at picking up things, despite how many different methods I try. Also, because I've had to do a lot of sales work in my life... teaching is not that far different, having to repeat myself all the time can get frustrating. Plus, you don't get a return on investment on every student some are beyond help... and it makes you less inclined to want to teach others that are more capable.

There was a phase where I really enjoyed teaching but I am past that point now. I used to teach Elementary School/2nd grade at University, and did alot of tutoring from highschool to college. The passion might come again in the future, but its not today.

You don't have to be extroverted to be a good teacher, but you have to really enjoy planting ideas/seeds in others. Great teachers are also great storytellers too.

I wouldn't enjoy teaching unless it was paving a means for me to practice on making youtube tutorials, etc - where that content lives forever, and you no longer have to repeat yourself.


You mentiones mostly methodologies,those can be taught. Enjoying the method or process is the personality aspect.

I am of the opinion that you can be taught to enjoy just about anything.


You can copy and learn methodologies, but great teachers are also great innovators in teaching methodologies.

A good teacher always seeks a simpler analogy to explain just about everything.

Someone who just copies things verbatim will have a harder time coming up with original ways of explaining difficult concepts.


Not without being fake. People can change over time, but the core "being" of a person – what they're really like – tends to stay static.

Here's a specific example. You can be taught to overcome a fear of getting up onstage. You can't be taught to love and relish when you find just the right metaphor to convey an idea to a class.

The latter gives you a dopamine hit, or it doesn't. And if it doesn't, then you have an uphill battle.

From Mathematical Writing, on Donald Knuth:

> Don’s secret delight, he confessed today, is to “play a library as if it were a musical instrument.” Using the resources of a great library to solve a specific problem—now that, to him, is real living. One of his favourite ways to spend an afternoon is amongst the labyrinthine archives, pursuing obscure cross-references, tracking down ancient and neglected volumes, all in the hope of finding the perfect quotation with which to open or conclude a chapter. Don takes great pleasure in finding a really good aphorism with which to preface a piece of writing. So many people have written so many neat things down the ages, he said, that it behooves us to take every opportunity to pass them on. Don has been known to take such a liking to a phrase that he has written an article to publish along with it.

> So how are we to find that wonderfully apposite quotation with which to preface our term paper? Serendipity, said Don. Live a full and varied life, read widely, keep your eyes and ears open, live long and prosper. You will stumble across great quotations. For example, Webster defines ‘bit’ as “a boring tool”—Don was able to use this when introducing a computer science talk.

Of course, this isn't necessarily applicable to high school teaching, which is more about legally-mandated babysitting than about teaching. But the core question is an intriguing one.


> Here's a specific example. You can be taught to overcome a fear of getting up onstage. You can't be taught to love and relish when you find just the right metaphor to convey an idea to a class.

"to love and relish" ,that's they key phrase here. Why can't I be taught to love and relish _____?

For example,you need a specific personality to be a truck driver. The lifestyle of a driver is extreme and demands that you enjoy some of those extremes. Why can't a person be taught to enjoy sitting in a truck for 8 hours and driving along a boring rural route all day long and waking up in a different state every morning? Why can't a person be taught to enjoy planting ideas in people's minds?

It may fall under "psychological education" as opposed to "academic education",but I don't understand why it can't be taught.


Not the way a physical technique, programming, cooking, etc., can.

There's an intangible aspect what cannot even define, much less teach. We can just mimic some external trappings.

That said, you can try and influence towards a certain personality/passion/etc. But it's not like "follow this X,Y and you'll get the Z result" guaranteed like teaching regular stuff. It requires innate drive.


I agree,the methodology might need to be tailored for the individual,much like a treatment by a psychotherapist.

But if it can be taught,it's worth teaching every teacher.


There are innate character traits in each of us. Of course education/training/practice can move the needle a little up or down, but you can't really turn a very introvert person into a very extrovert one, for example.


Why not? I am extremely introverted, I became that way as a result of adapting to and learning from my life experience. Why can't I be taught through experience and having to adopt to uncomfortable situations, to become extremely extroverted?

There is a reason the military has a bootcamp,it's to break your personality so they can form a new personality that can take orders and lives without hesitation.


Being able to obey and follow discipline does not mean it changes your personality. Proof is, once men return to the civil life, nobody in their family says that they are a different person or something. The core personality remains.

Unless they have developed PTSD or something but that's trauma, not training.


The military made an ondemand killer out of them,how would civilians measure that change. The military doesn't make you a different person,nicer or meaner,the change they instill is simple -- your personality will obey lawful orders and work in a team.


Pick up skills can be learned, leadership can be learned, why not personality?

"If you don't like yourself, invent another one."




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