My friend Preston Poore, whose new book I promoted yesterday, mentioned this quote in a pre-launch webinar last week:

It’s a great quote – incorrectly attributed to Benjamin Franklin, it turns out – and I’m going to be making more of an effort to involve people when I teach. After all, I certainly had to do that when I taught mathematics. My students loved to watch me do math, but of course, math is not learned by watching others do it. “Please work problem 3 on page 137” is what helps people learn math. Just like Dawson Trotman’s “You teach him” involved Les Spencer at a completely different level and actually helped him learn what Dawson had told him. It’s what Jesus was doing in Matthew 10:

And he called to him his twelve disciples and gave them authority over unclean spirits, to cast them out, and to heal every disease and every affliction…These twelve Jesus sent out… (Matthew 10.1, 5, ESV)