I helped Jenn with some HTML last night, adding graphics to her diary and changing the layout around a bit. She was remarkably well-mannered the entire time, to my surprise, even through such conversations as:

ME: Okay, now change the AREA tag to an A tag.

JENN: The whole thing?

ME: No, leave the HREF part.

JENN: Like that?

ME: No, just the HREF part.

JENN: Like that?

ME: No no, the whole HREF part.

I can tell you that if the same thing had happened when she taught me how to sew, I would have stabbed myself violently with the needle out of frustration. ("Now do a backstitch... no, no, that's a running stitch. Do a backstitch.") Technological walleye vision is a difficult problem to overcome - your brain gets so used to seeing the natural structure in code that it's hard to step back and explain it to a newcomer. Furthermore, people who aren't hardcore tech-heads will often enter such a situation with a bleak outlook, assuming they won't understand, and that can often be self-fulfilling. Jenn, however, maintained a good attitude the whole time, got excited about the results, and expressed a disproportionate amount of gratitude.

I think I'm a pretty good teacher, when all is said and done. I strongly believe in the infuriating practice of forcing the student to understand every step s/he takes, and to arrive at those steps on their own, with only some guidance and structuring provided by me. As Hunter put it, "You make me do the work. That's a good thing." Ayne, after many hours of programming help, managed to learn my mannerisms to the point where she knew she'd done something wrong when my breathing pattern changed.

The fortunate aspect of all three (Jenn, Hunter, Ayne) was that they all really legitimately wanted to learn the material, even if only to pass a class. They weren't just interested in results. This, I've discovered, is the only kind of student I can effectively teach.

During my senior year in high school, my friend Abhishek took over a student-run and faculty-sponsored program in which upperclassmen drove to an inner-city elementary school once a week and "tutored" children. Towards the end of the year, I participated in the program for a few weeks. What the "tutoring" consisted of was a gymnasium full of kids - about 15 kids to each tutor - doing their homework. If a kid got stuck on something, or didn't know how to do a problem, they'd come to the tutor and ask them for the answer.

What frequently ended up happening was that a kid who didn't even grasp the concept of, say, subtraction would stumble through a subtraction worksheet, occasionally pretending to count things on his fingers, but essentially getting the tutor to do the whole thing for him. One frequent strategy was to make random guesses until the tutor confirms one.

This pissed me off. This, I thought, is exactly what's wrong with our educational system. There was no way I was doing these kids' homework for them, because ten years down the road, when the kid is trying to make it through an algebra class so he can graduate from high school and have at least a shot at some semblance of financial stability, he's gonna need to know how to subtract. So I tried to take matters into my own hands. I tried to walk the kids through the problems conceptually, tried to ask them why the answer they had just successfully guessed was correct, tried to give them some knowledge that would last from one subtraction problem to the next. God, I tried.

Not only did I fail spectacularly, but I was met with outright hostility. "Man, just tell me the answer." The tutors were there to do your homework for you, as the kids saw it. At one point a girl ran crying to another tutor when I wouldn't give her an answer. Though I think he understood what I was trying to do, and agreed with it, the poor guy gave her the answer. What was he going to do? She was crying.

There were a couple of exceptions, kids with a good attitude towards learning. But these kids were, by and large, not in need of tutoring. These kids, by virtue of said good attitude (or perhaps as a cause of it), knew the material. The work they were doing was beneath them. Occasionally such a kid would get stuck on something and ask me for help, and that was a breath of fresh air - but those were few and far between.

I quickly became disillusioned with the program and stopped going. I wasn't doing those kids any good, mostly because they weren't going to let me. I'm not interested in figuring out whether the blame lies with the kids, or with the teachers, or with the parents, or wherever. I decided that if I was going to do something charitable, I'd give blood, or volunteer at a soup kitchen - something that I knew was going to help, or at least had the potential to help.

I think I could be a good professor, and I know I can be a good one-on-one tutor when my student actually cares. I am patient, I explain things concisely but thoroughly, I provide an environment of structured and directed discovery that leaves the student with an understanding of the concepts behind the material and a feeling that they accomplished that understanding themselves.

Screw this. I'm going to the beach.