I’ve been thinking about Elodin from Patrick Rothfuss’ Name of the Wind series lately. Elodin is a teacher at a magic university attended by Kvothe, the main character; he teaches Naming, the most difficult of arts. In the first class Kvothe attends Elodin arrives thirty minutes late. He tells them he’s going to throw a rock and gives them ten minutes to calculate exactly where it will land. After they’ve struggled with the math and admit they can’t he calls an eight-year old servant boy into the class and tells the boy to catch the rock, which he does. Then Elodin writes the names of twenty books on the board and tells the students to read one. Which ones are most important? a student asks, and Elodin says he doesn’t know because he hasn’t read any of them. He puts stars by three, underlines two, and draws a sad face by one, then walks out of the room. Elodin is known to have been a genius who outshone even the brightest scholars of the university; he’s also considered to be insane, and is kept on as a kindness, and allowed to teaching Naming since no one understands it anyway. He is constantly giving Kvothe pointless tasks, and at one point he pushes Kvothe out a window and nearly kills him. He is always trying to keep his students intellectually off-balance because he says Naming’s not an art you can learn in a sequential way; it’s more a kind of inspiration.
Like anything in a fantasy novel Elodin is over the top, but it made me think of the different kinds of teachers we have. Mostly, good teachers are the kind whose units are planned out through the year and who progress through a subject, carefully building understanding like an architect. And then occasionally you get the teacher who’s kind of a flake, but who shows you things that no one else shows you, either because other teachers consider it beyond your level or just not worth teaching because it doesn’t connect anything else on the curriculum. Sometimes what they teach really is beyond your level and you’re just left confused but intrigued. These teachers’ classes are either engrossing or interminable, depending on the day and their mood and yours. They may not be good at what’s known as “classroom management,” and maybe their classes are a bit of a circus. Maybe sometimes they lose their temper where a more measured teacher would be patient and mature. They may try to teach you things they barely just learned themselves, just because they’re excited about it.
I’m oversimplifying; a teacher can be both organized and imagination-stretching or one or the other depending on the circumstances. But I know that it’s the Elodin-like teachers who gave me moments in a classroom that still stick in my head now. I’m not saying I’m an Elodin or that I’m trying to be, but I’d like to be the kind of teacher who at least sometimes pushes kids to do things that is maybe beyond them but maybe isn’t. I promise not to push any kids out the window.