Teacher vs. Student

Back in high school, I have encountered many situations where communal acquisition of knowledge has clashed with authoritative acquisition of knowledge. A prime example of this would be when my high school English class discussed the novel "Seabuscuit: An American Legend" by Laura Hillenbrand through the means of a Socratic seminar. In the seminar, each one of my classmates commented on an aspect of the book including the theme, plot, and background story of the novel by using their very own view of the story. Through this method, the entire class was able to gain knowledge on the lessons that Hillenbrand wanted readers to gain through reading the novel.

However, after the Socratic seminar, the entire class found out that Hillenbrand's lesson in "Seabuscuit: An American Legend" was different from the lesson that our class generated through discussion and debate amongst one another. Our teacher, who studied Hillenbrand in college as an English major, presented us with Hillenbrand's lesson in her novel which clearly differed from our generated lesson.

As a class we began to question our teacher's knowledge and even her creditability. How could our class-generated lesson be completely different from the author's intended lesson? Before the class got too rowdy with opposition, our teacher informed us that although our lesson was completely different from the lesson of the author, it does not mean that our lesson is wrong. She continued by stating that when people read novels, they interpret them differently and thus take away different lessons from the novel. The class let out one big sigh of relief as we realized just how true our teacher's statement was.

The form of learning that I find most useful is communal acquisition of knowledge. This is because a group of people with different perspectives and opinions on the world who come together to discuss a topic with the help of research can acquire more knowledge from each other in my opinion. In addition, I feel that I can learn more from peers my age who I can relate to than say an old professor with years of experience under his or her belt.