The Difference Between Teaching And Mentoring
The critic and novelist Paula Marantz Cohen, writing in The American Scholar, makes an interesting distinction between teaching and mentoring:
“A subtle but important difference distinguishes mentors and teachers. A teacher has greater knowledge than a student; a mentor has greater perspective. In this sense, a mentor is more like an editor—or the best kind of editor. Maxwell Perkins comes to mind. He was able to realize his writers’ true voice through his editorial intervention. In the case of one famous protégé, Thomas Wolfe, this meant cutting away huge swathes of material that obscured the good, true stuff from view. Gordon Lish’s relationship to Raymond Carver was less clear-cut. He, too, cleared away thickets of verbiage from Carver’s stories. But if we consider those stories before and after Lish’s intervention, it is hard to say whether Lish imposed his own minimalist vision on the more baroque Carver or whether he brought Carver’s best writerly self to the surface. Arguments could be made either way. In the former case, Lish would have been Carver’s teacher; in the latter, his mentor.
My own experience with this distinction goes back to my father. When I was growing up, he always read and carefully edited whatever I wrote. He was my first teacher. His interest in my writing and his profound respect for language helped shape me as a scholar and writer. But he also imposed his own voice and inserted his own predilections into my work when I was too young to have my own. Hence, he helped to shape these things in me while also delaying and possibly inhibiting the development of my own style.
I had teachers in high school, college, and graduate school, but did not find mentors until later, when I met my husband, Alan Penziner, and my Drexel colleague, Dave Jones. Both have been my mentors. They helped me clear away the clutter that obscured what I wanted to say. They listened to and nurtured my voice. I have a cleaner, clearer style and a keener ear for words and cadence as a result of their editing. My thinking grows crisper through conversation with them. Most significantly, though, I am more confident in my opinions.” Read more here.
Does Cohen’s distinction hold up for you? Teaching, in her view, seems to involve an imposition of the teacher’s own knowledge and outlook, while mentoring is more about coaxing out what’s already in the student’s work. But it seems to me teaching, done well, can be an evocative process, too. What do you think?
Teachers, instructors, trainers and professors generally work from a curriculum or lesson plan. They may impart their own knowledge or set up learning opportunities that lead to a specific learning outcome. Mentoring is a more organic and dynamic process in which the mentor offers clarity and deep questions the mentee will answer for his or her self. Teaching generally involves one person giving a lesson to a group. Mentoring can occur in a group, but most often occurs between two people with a long-term commitment to causing growth and breakthroughs that lead to action, accountability and accomplishment. I am certain that some editors do function as mentors. I am also certain that an experienced person from any field can be an effective mentor. They need to know how to listen deeply, observe patterns of behavior and results, ask thinking questions. encourage creative problem-solving, and point the way along the path to mastery of new skills.