Teachers and students

With a new academic year shortly to commence in many countries, this is a good time to turn our thoughts to education. Of the 128 teachings in Pirkei Avot, a staggering proportion deal with this topic, a total of 58—that’s around 45 mishnayot and baraitot—give advice on teaching, studying or on the relationship between teacher and taught.

At its highest level, teaching can generate great personal tensions. This is not a solely Jewish phenomenon; it can be seen in kolel, in yeshivah and at university. This is because teachers who do their jobs well enough will often find that they have equipped their students to discuss their topic of study as equals; they may have empowered their students to take them on in argument, sometimes getting the better of them.

Pirkei Avot recognises (at 6:6) that teachers can learn from their students and also that a teacher is obliged to concede the truth when he knows he is wrong (5:9).  One should hold one’s students in as high a level of respect as one expects to receive oneself (4:15). There is no escape from the vital act of enriching another’s understanding: everyone, including a teacher, is supposed to have a teacher—and someone who can teach but doesn’t is regarded as being below contempt (1:13).

Having been a teacher and a student (often at the same time), I have often pondered on the complexities of the teacher-student relationship. Here’s a case in point.

Back in the 1980s I was teaching part of a postgraduate diploma course on intellectual property law. In the course of doing so, I often set written work. On one occasion I set an essay on patent law. One student, a lawyer from Pakistan, handed in a fairly mediocre effort, which I was obliged to read. The essay was quite week, apart from one perceptive and well-drafted paragraph in the middle which most impressed me. One reading it a second and then a third time, it gradually dawned on me that I had read it before. More than that, I had written it, this paragraph having been copied verbatim from my book, Introduction to Intellectual Property Law, that I had published a year or so before.

I called the student in to discuss the essay. I had no wish to hurt his feelings by labelling him a plagiarist or by challenging his honesty, but neither did I wish him to make a habit of doing such things since it was bound to get him into trouble eventually. Anyway, not wishing to embarrass him, I explained gently to him that in good legal circles it was considered wrong to pass the writings of another off as being one’s own, particularly without attributing that text to the author (see Avot 6:6). “I’m afraid you don’t understand”, I added, “but when I am marking an essay I want to know what you think so that I can see if you are right or wrong”.

The student looked a little surprised, then answered: “No, I’m afraid you don’t understand. I copied this paragraph to find out what you think, to see if you still agree with what you said when you wrote your book”.

How does this little scenario pan out in terms of Pirkei Avot? Suggestions, anyone?