The ideal-teacher student relationship is one where both the teacher and student learn and adapt to new ideas and reasoning. Just as a tour guide can’t make you enjoy the time you spend wandering around the scenery, a teacher, despite their title, can’t be the force that is responsible for the student’s learning. However, like a good tour guide, a teacher can make it a lot nicer than it would be otherwise. A teacher’s job is to guide the student as best they can down the path of knowledge and it is the student’s job to follow as best they can. All other aspects of their relationship as teacher and student stem from this.

The most important trait for a teacher to posses is the ability to adapt to their student’s needs. If a teacher will works off a fixed schedule and never makes any changes, they will not be able to instruct the student as well as they would otherwise. They must be able to deviate, spending more time in the places that create confusion and less in the places that are quickly understood. They need to spend the right amount of time explaining each thing; otherwise it is demeaning to the relationship.

In an ideal relationship, both teacher and student need to be gaining as much as possible at all times. Obviously knowledge is the most important thing to be gained but along with that there needs to be a level of satisfaction or accomplishment along with enjoyment. Someone can work like crazy and complete more than everyone else combined but unless they feel that they have truly accomplished something the task has no meaning simply because they will have done nothing in their minds. This stems into enjoyment because if you feel like you’re doing nothing you will become bored and being bored with something is only counterproductive while doing it. Whenever I become bored with something, I stop paying attention to it and start doing something else. If you start doing something else while being taught then you will not learn during that time. It is therefore essential for some form of enjoyment to be present otherwise nothing can be gained.

The last requirement for an ideal teacher student relationship is that both are ready and willing to commit themselves to either their instructing or learning. Now this applies mainly to the student who is for the most part required to be there and less to the teacher who chooses to be there. The imbalance comes from the simple logic that the teacher is almost automatically committed because why else would they be a teacher in the first place? There are plenty of other professions out there. On the other hand a student is more obligated to be their instead of choosing to be their and thus has a much higher chance of not being committed than the teacher.

If for some reason either of the two are not committed to the task then the endeavor will be a complete waste. If the student does not want to learn then they will not learn. The teacher cannot physically force the student to learn, just as our tour guide, cannot make someone love a piece of scenery if they have already decided that it is stupid and that they want to go home. Similarly it is impossible to force someone to do a better job as a guide. And so, the only way an ideal relationship can form is if teacher and student are both committed to their tasks.