“Teaching is the highest form of understanding”

Aristotle

Understanding lies in the heart of teaching. That’s why it’s so important to practice idea sharing and interpretation at the lesson. A proverb or a quotation can be a nice starting point for a discussion because nothing fuels the mind better than a controversial statement. That’s why I asked my students from the Department of Social Education and the Department of Social and Cultural Studies to comment on quotations from newspaper “English” front pages. Here are some of the compositions created by second-year students.

“Teachers open the door, but you must enter by yourself.”

Chinese proverb

I agree with the Chinese proverb: “Teachers open the door, but you must enter by yourself”. I think that it is unwise to fall for an illusion of taking a teacher for your personal underpaid, yet eager, bell-boy who’s totally dedicated to one purpose only – to swing the door open wide upon your immediate approach. A true teacher’s goal would be to assist his scholars in their desire to enter the world of knowledge. Hence, while a good teacher may indeed have the right key to allow each and every particular scholar the shortest way to effective learning, it is truly a scholar’s burden to inspire his or her teacher to share that key to the full extent.
A properly motivated teacher has a well established ability to guide his scholars through to that mysterious gate of knowledge. Here is one fact worthy of mentioning: scholars are totally not passive elements within the universe of learning. They share strong tendencies to find unique passages through that dynamic and everchanging universe. Giving all that a considerable amount of analytic thought, we can only hope to devise a certain set of tools that can assist a teacher in facilitating a transition of his scholars into well-educated grown men and women.

Polina Korobkova,
Aleksandr Smirnov

“There are two lasting bequests we can give our children: One is roots; the other is wings.”

Hodding Carter

A family is a root. If a tree doesn’t have roots, any wind can break it. A child is like a young tree. If his roots are rotten, a trunk will be rotten too. However if the roots are healthy, a tree will blossom. If a child lives in a loving family, he has strong roots. But a child grows. Life has a lot in store for him. When a nestling grows up, it abandons its childhood nest. A child grows older and leaves his home. We give him wings. We give him freedom. Wings can be broken if a bird lives in a cage.

Julia Spiridonova

“We are shaped and fashioned by what we love.”

Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

Nobody has a perfect family, but everybody wants one. This notion comes from the sphere of ideals. There are several stereotypes about a perfect family with such words as comprehension, love, confidence, responsibility for each other, etc. There are many such beautiful words and expressions, and everybody thinks, reading them “oh, my family is not as perfect as I want and somebody is happier than I am”. Because of this comparison, he/she starts to be in a bad mood and family problems get worse. Therefore, in my opinion, we shouldn’t think about ideals and perfect families. We should be grateful to our families, should love them, without comparing with a perfect ideal. Because if we do it, we start envying and stop enjoying what we do have. Perfection kills our happiness, just don’t think about it.

Julia Markina