It's okay for profs to say 'I don't know' - McBagonluri

Teachers, lecturers and professors must be humble enough to tell their students they do not know something if they really do not know it, Prof Fred McBagonluri, Provost and President of Academic City College, has said.

The Ghanaian engineer, inventor, novelist, and thought-leader told Abdul-Karim Ibrahim and Eugene Bawelle on Class91.3FM's Executive Breakfast Show on Monday, 16 November 2020 that such honesty on the part of teachers and professors could trigger active student engagement and involvement in the academic process.

The founding Dean at the Faculty of Engineering at Ashesi University College narrated how such brutal frankness on his part, a few years ago, inured to the benefit of both his students and himself.

"I will give you an example: I remember a couple of years ago, I was teaching a course at Ashesi University – Solid Mechanics – and I was on Chapter 9; its 12 Chapters. Usually, in the public universities, they teach those in two semesters…

"And, so, at Chapter 9, a lady raises her hand and she asks me a question and I stare back at her and say: 'I don't know the answer'. And I tell you; if you dropped a pin that day, you'd hear it because they've never, in their entire lives, heard a professor say: 'I don't know'.

"And, so, I stood there for a while and said: 'What seems to be the problem?' And nobody said anything. So, I said: 'Well, why don't we do this: today is Monday, so Wednesday, we all do our homework and we can come back and compare notes'.

"Nobody said a thing. So, on my way home that day, I said: 'Wow, tomorrow by now, everybody on this campus will know that the Dean of Engineering was asked a question and he couldn't answer.'"

He continued: "So, I came back Wednesday, we discussed it and I told them that when I took this course 25 years ago, my professor only thought three chapters, he had just married…and his wife was calling him every second.

"And, so, for me to teach chapter nine for something that I was only thought three chapters, you can tell how much energy I'm putting in to be a facilitator for this class; and, by the way, this is a university and if we all have the answers, we shouldn't be here.

"Now, I tell you; the mood of that class changed. For the first time, the kids know that it's OK for a professor not to know and to humbly admit that he did not know", he pointed out.

Prof McBagonluri said he picked a very important lesson from that incident, explaining: "So, what I thought was going to be a negative thing, actually became a positive thing because the class became more engaging and there were five girls in that class who all got A's …"

"So, I say that to emphasise the fact that our teachers and professors need to become a little more humble, they need to go into the classroom and understand that this is a university, it's not a know-all place. If they create that conducive climate for the kids, you'll get them out of their shell and they’ll become more productive", Prof McBagonluri advised.

He also expressed reservations with the class size of Ghanaian universities.

"I think overcrowded classes are not places to deliver knowledge. There is just the false sense that whenever you are blaring off the loudspeakers, people are listening and they are absorbing that knowledge" but "I think it's more clownish".

He added: "I think we just need to find fundamental ways of trying to impact knowledge as an experience that you should enjoy rather than a chore that you want to get rid of".