The power of student initiative

My art teacher told my class something very interesting about his philosophy in teaching.  He said that we, the students, dictate what the teacher teaches.  

I’m taking a very difficult art class right now, Art 311: Design for Living, Innovate and Fabricate.  It is filled primarily 11 and 12th graders.  It is a product design class which focuses on improving existing designs for products or innovating new customer friendly ones, using 3D printing and laser cutting.  However, we have to learn a 3D modeling program called Rhinoceros in order to be to model these products with a laser cutter or 3D printer.  

It is a difficult program to learn, especially on Mac, since it is command based.  As a result, I have to learn many different commands, how to manipulate what I want, and get the shapes and curves that I want.  Furthermore, after shapes are created, we must learn how to create them with precision.  There are tutorials which we watch for homework, but outside of those videos, we are expected to practice at the computer lab for homework.  Many students do not take this initiative, and I myself, who endeavors to go 3 times per week, am still struggling to take full advantage of the various commands the program has to offer.  

On Wednesday, seeing how little we had progressed in program fluency, my teacher spoke to us about being motivated.  He said that in the real world, no one will be there to watch every baby step of the way to learning a new program.  He says that much of his current knowledge in Rhino comes from self-learning and self initiation.  Or more simply stated, being proactive.  He says this is one of the key lessons in this course, being able to design something without much guidance, be able to identify issues with the design, and later, problem solve around these faults.  Then he mentioned something about his teaching philosophy 311.  He said that if we, the students, do not take initiative to learn the basic commands and organizational methods in Rhino, then he will be spending his time and energy in helping us review these commands and controls.  However, if we find the time to master these ourselves outside of class, he can focus on giving us conceptual, design, and design feedback in class.  In essence, we control how and what we get out of this class.  I have been thinking about this for the past few days and I wonder whether this is true in other classes.  Students control what the teacher teaches to a certain extent.