Confessions of a Public Speaker

How to teach anyone anything

There is some very good news: when it works, teaching is one of the most rewarding experiences there is. Seeing an idea you’ve explained be understood and successfully applied by someone is unlike any other pleasure in life. Even knowing you’ve reached 5 people out of 100 is worth the disappointment of not reaching the other 95. Had you not shown up that day, you’d never have even reached those five. And maybe the person who would have shown up to teach had you chickened out would have only reached three students, or none. Sometimes in life, 5 out of 100 is above average. Besides, there is no alternative to the challenges of teaching—if you want to impart ideas and knowledge, it’s the only game in town.

And despite my skepticism and my fluency in depressing statistics, I believe anyone can teach anyone anything. But I mean this in a specific sense. If you have two dedicated, reasonably intelligent people, one interested in teaching and the other wanting to learn, something great can happen. Think master and apprentice, mentor and protégé. For learning, small numbers win. The success of this one-on-one method is proven throughout history; many so-called prodigies were tutored by a parent or family friend (Einstein, Picasso, and Mozart all qualify). Yes, they had amazing, inherent talent, but they were still privately taught by people invested in their learning. Teaching is intimacy of the mind, and you can’t achieve that if you must work in large numbers. ...