PJ O’Rourke once wrote that corporal punishment should be reintroduced into schools, but used on teachers. I might agree, but for the fact that I have had some incredibly good teachers over the years.

I once heard that you can teach a good teacher to be a better teacher, but you can’t teach a bad teacher to be a good teacher. From supervising and consulting with special education teachers to working alongside them, to having been a student of teachers and a teacher of students myself, I have come to believe that what makes teachers good is that they start off with simply being a good human being. That is to say, they are kind, receptive, curious, not terribly judgmental or jaded, and enthusiastic. I don’t believe that good teachers need to be very smart, or even that emotionally stable, although that latter quality certainly helps. I also don’t believe that being a good human being necessarily makes one a good teacher– only that it is the source from which all else springs.

Good teachers, I believe, have in common the ability to listen, and active listening, as it is so often called among psychologists, is quite a skill. It is the sine qua non of understanding, and understanding is the foundation of intimacy. Intimacy may seem an odd word when it comes to teaching, because it implies a two-way street, and that aspect of learning isn’t always clear. In an age in which much learning takes place while passively watching online videos, it is hard to say that there is much intimacy going on. But there is even a sort of intimacy that can be created digitally, or as we used to say, over the airwaves.

Vin Scully has said that when he broadcasts he imagines that he is talking to one person. Listening to Vin Scully broadcast Dodgers games feels as though you are engaging a warm, charming friend. The best online video experiences, in which my attention is most riveted, occurs when I feel as though the presenter somehow knows me, is somehow interested in me. That is perhaps one reason why the phrase “death by PowerPoint” has become so popular among presenters. Bullet points on a screen may as well be bullets pointed at the audience.

But when I look back at the teachers from whom I learned the most, one of them in particular stood in front of his statistics students and practically read from his lecture notes. The fact that Charlie Moore was a sweet, kind and unpretentious man peeked through his dry monotone and that was what made you want to listen and learn what he had to say. And after class, any student could stop him in the hallway and he would give you his full attention, making you feel as if he truly cared about what you had to say. That kind of kindness, that kind of intimacy, is what makes a good teacher great.