Depth, Breadth and Familiarity of a Teacher

Quite sometime back I read in an article or book on teaching that a teacher's knowledge has to be like that of an iceberg. The portion made visible to the students is like the visible portion of the iceberg. The teacher needs to have a lot of knowledge inside him in comparison to the matter he is expected to teach in a class.

The writer mentioned a factor of six as the advantage to be had by a teacher. The teacher requires six times depth, six times breadth and six times familiarity of the subject matter to be taught in a class. A teacher teaching intermediate with a post graduate degree would naturally satisfy the depth and familiarity criteria. He still has to take care of breadth which requires his reading five books having similar subject matter at the same level as he is teaching. At higher education level, the depth requirement itself requires a great effort from the teacher.

In a business school, a teacher, who puts in the effort, would be in a good position to integrate the knowledge of several disciplines in many of the subjects and thus become a role model to students. Many persons feel that business school students do not show an integrated view of business and they blame the curriculum for it even though every b-school curriculum has a variety of subjects.