Flexibility & Openness to Ideas - An Integral Part of Teaching & Learning

 

Buddha said when the student is ready the teacher appears. This simplified, means that when the student wants to learn, the teacher must be able to transfer his knowledge.
As a part of growth and personal development, I attend various events, programs and sessions related to my field.
At times I have noticed that the students genuinely want to learn and are motivated to ask questions on the topic, but the speakers have an agenda which they want to follow and not deviate. So when posed with questions many speakers put the question in the parking lot or ignore it altogether, instead of answering it. It could be that it is a challenging question for the speaker to respond to. But still it is his duty to satisfy the curiosity of the audience by answering it.
As a trainer myself, I relate to it that is a classroom if we go with an assumption that no person in the audience is smart and they are here to just listen and agree to the trainer, then please that thought is absolutely supposed to be thrown out of the window. A trainer or teacher or ant speaker considering an audience to be dumb is a biggest mistake to start with.
Please attempt to answer the question or say I will get back to you and you get back as promised. At many times, I have seen teachers telling students that I will get back or telling students that I will answer that later. Having a parking lot when you are training and putting that question aside is a different thing and then answering it later is justified because not all answers have to be obtained immediately. For some realisations to occur in training, it's a matter of gradual discovery. But not answering something and ignoring the question of the student altogether, also shows ignorance and the lack of knowledge of the teacher himself.

An NLP presupposition states be flexible, adapt to the situation. Only if these few trainers understood this and not be rigid in sharing limited understanding of a topic.