< Agency costs of big-time college football | Main | Can the NatWest Three receive a fair trial in Houston? >
July 16, 2006
"On Teaching" by Ross M. Lence
This has been a weekend of reflection for me as I contemplate the life of one of Houston's finest teachers -- Professor Ross M. Lence (previous post here) of the University of Houston -- who died this past week.
Over a hundred former students, colleagues and friends gathered this past Thursday evening to laugh, cry and reminisce about Ross at the visitation, and then those friends and hundreds more gathered on Friday morning for the Requiem Mass for Ross at St. Anne Catholic Church. The mass was profoundly moving, with St. Anne's soloist Kay Kahl providing beautiful singing and UH Honors College Dean Ted Estess -- one of Ross' best friends and closest colleagues -- absolutely hitting the ball out of the park with a poignant eulogy that conveyed perfectly Ross' extraordinary combination of teaching brilliance, humor and humanity. The Chronicle here, the UH student newspaper here and UH Dean of Political Science Harrell Rodgers here chimed in with thoughtful tributes.
A particularly nice touch of the services for Ross was his family's decision to provide a copy of one of Ross' essays to everyone who attended. The essay -- entitled "On Teaching" -- was writted by Ross a decade or so ago while collecting his thoughts on teaching in connection with the effort of his former students and friends to raise the funds that eventually endowed the Ross M. Lence Distinguished Teaching Chair at the University of Houston. Ross never published "On Teaching," but by passing it along below (pdf here), I hope that each teacher who happens upon this special essay will take a moment to read and reflect on it, and then use it as inspiration to provide the type of warm, thoughtful and rich mentoring to their students that is Ross Lence's legacy to his:
I shall not shock anyone, but merely subject myself to good-natured ridicule, if I profess myself inclined to the old way of thinking that the primary concern of teaching and teachers is the student.While such an observation may seem elementary, it should be noted that for those who define the function of a university as “the discovery, preservation, and transmission of knowledge,” the role of teaching (presumably the transmission of knowledge) is formulated in such a way as to avoid mentioning either the teacher or the student. Indeed, when confined to the transmission and preservation of knowledge alone, teaching would seem to be little more than the transmission of decaying sense, entombed in that graveyard of knowledge, the notes of the teacher’s students.
Teaching necessarily involves the highest forms of discovery, the awakening of the students’ minds and souls to the world of creativity and imagination. A good teacher chal r.com/nav-commenters.gif' /> at July 18, 2006 09:30 AM
Post a comment
Thanks for signing in, . Now you can comment. (sign out)
(If you haven't left a comment here before, you may need to be approved by the site owner before your comment will appear. Until then, it won't appear on the entry. Thanks for waiting.)