Point of View Part Two

If you think that personal point of view affects your learning than what does it say about teaching? Does your point of view effect how you teach a subject? Every textbook is written through the eyes of the writer and his point of view on the subject. With a science text book an author may stress the importance of one topic. Different math books may vary the order in which they discuss the material. The most biased of them all, and my personal favorite would have to be a history text book. When a subject is open to interpretation it greatly increases the way it is taught to others. A historian may write his opinion into the book subconsciously, but that can be true for any writing. Not only writers do this, but teachers as well. I've seen it all throughout my schooling. Teachers explain what they know in a way that gives you their view. For example, I took AP Calculus last year as a Junior. The teacher had very strong views about the textbook that the school had. He disliked the book so much that he had new ones ordered. When I began my senior year I got in Calculus again. The new teacher had no problems with the book and intended on using it. To me it made no sense to go in the order that this book went. This is because my teaching from the previous year gave me a bias against the book. It gets more evident that teachers have a bias while teaching when you look at these teachers' backgrounds. The teacher that disliked the book went to college in a different country. His professor would give the history of the area of study and continue with the lesson. In the new textbooks, there was a section about the mathematicians that developed the particular area of study. This is familiar and therefore easier to teach. The teacher that liked the book went to Adams City and probably used the same textbooks. Both of these teachers developed a separate point of view about teaching the same subject. This leads them to bias their teaching.