When We All Became Teachers

The Internet has made it possible, but does it work?

Photo by Austrian National Library on Unsplash

An apprentice learns from a master, who themselves were once an apprentice, learning from another master — but has, in the meantime, practised the trade for years, hence, really becoming a master of the trade.

A school teacher teaches the pupils such topics that the teacher has studied at a higher level, inspiring the pupils to learn something along the way, however not to become as good as the teacher. The teacher has superior knowledge in comparison, but the teacher also has skills in teaching — bringing up the pupil from being an unknowing child to become a learning young adult is the goal, along with some amount of practical knowledge.

A teacher at a higher education is a super-expert in their field, trying to guide the students a bit into thinking the right way, but leaving it up to the students to learn the stuff. There is an amount of fixed knowledge to learn, but most of all, there is a way of thinking to adapt to, often a scientific thinking adapted to the topic. The higher education teacher inspires by their knowledge for the student to aspire to become just as knowledgable some day.

A sports coach is different.

For the sports coach, it is all about knowing something about the sport, but providing a constant psychological kick to the sportsperson — working with the mind. There may be details about how to train some muscles or some techniques in doing the sport, such as how to run and turn and jump to get longer or higher than the other athletes, but the coach may not be a master of the sport.

While it is typical for a sports coach to have had a past in the sport themselves, it is much more appreciated that they can focus on making the sportsperson good at the sport, also better than the coach ever was.

A coach is lifting the coached to new highs.

What about a life coach, then? Or a social media coach? Or a yoga trainer, or whatever is possible to do nowadays?

Well, it is a bit blurry. And it looks like many of these modern teachers haven’t understood their role.

But let me first illustrate why this is a problem:

Let’s as an example say that you live in a small village, you want to learn about yoga, and there is one yoga teacher there. Lucky you, you can go ahead, get started. That one yoga teacher may know something but not a lot, however, it doesn’t matter for a start: you just want to get going, and this helps.

Later, you’ll want to move on to a more advanced study, but since you already know something, you can much better look for what you need. Books, video courses, self-practice, etc., may bring you a good deal further. And if you continue along that path and wants to become a yoga master, you can look out into the world to find the right person to guide you. A coach who can provide you with what you need, be it practical experience, mental training, a support for keeping moving, or indeed, just a practical help to schedule a reasonable amount of training.

You may want to learn to write better, to repair a car, or many other things, and there will be different options available, but for all of them, getting started is the first step. And almost any person who just want to, no matter their skills or experience, can probably help you get started.

The first step is the easiest, despite the popular saying that it is the hardest.

It is the next step that really is the hardest, since you then want to put some substance into the study of the new topic, and you may not yet be very confident in your own knowledge about it, so you can’t do it yourself. Then you need a person to help, who knows what is needed for someone like you. That person, coach, must have some experience and knowledge, but most of all, a skill in reading your needs and existing skills, your place in all this, and help you, mentally, to move forward.

The coach must be able to see who you are, meet you where you are, and start from there, as Kierkegaard said. Otherwise, you’ll not feel helped.

So yes, the very first step can be taken by the help of almost anyone, but the next one will require some skills, and if you don’t have them already, you need a coach who has.

In these times, where we live in a global village, everybody being able to get in touch with everybody else, it should be easy to find that second step coach, shouldn’t it? If there is anybody in the world who is able to be that coach, it is just about googling a bit, and there you are — a list of suitable coaches.

Except that you don’t know what you need, because you exactly do not yet have that skill and experience. You are vulnerable, an easy victim for scammers. You are not alone, as there is, literally, a world of people like you, available to wannabe coaches on Google and social media. And that inspires a lot of people to try their luck in this trade.

Now, what was a coach expected to do at this level? Taking you from initial knowledge to a greater confidence required an ability to meet you where you are. And what are coaches typically doing on the Internet? Not at all this! They set up a list of things for everybody to do in order to become experts in something.

It is easy. Setting up a list, I mean. And just a few more steps, then they have a website, a newsletter, an e-book, etc., and they start posting on social media with the idea that they will simply “fake it ‘till they make it”.

Many of these coaches are actually trying to teach others to become coaches like them.

None of these people seem to have the faintest idea of what the background of their clients are, and even when they find out, they keep teaching their list of things to do like if nothing had happened, like if they still didn’t know what their client needed.

That leaves the clients of the coaches a bit confused, but the confusion takes some time to get built up — as the client exactly doesn’t know what is right or wrong, but still believe in the possibility to develop into a master. They just need to continue long enough. “Every apprentice must spend 10,000 hours to become a master”, as another popular saying goes.

At times, people decide to follow more than one coach. This is inspired by the not-so-personal coaching style, often just sending out a newsletter now and then, and the relatively low price of it, often making it economically possible to buy several courses, as it in reality is, even though the teacher calls themselves a coach.

So, a lot of people buy a lot of courses, but they do not get what they need, as the courses are not addressing their specific position in the learning process, nor in life.

We do not seem to realise, though, that this is what happens. We keep telling ourselves in such situations, that it was just because we didn’t out enough of effort into our journey towards mastery, so we didn’t get there. And we keep trying new courses, from new teachers.

A course platform like Udemy, selling courses at, often just $10 each, has seen how most people are buying very many courses. Because it is possible. The completion rate is perhaps 10%, as the students/clients are jumping from one course to the next, hoping for that one to be bringing them a bit forward, better than the previous one.

Many course platforms exist, many coaches, many paid newsletters with instructions on how to move forward in whatever life journey you are on.

That requires many of us to be teachers, providing all that stuff. And many of us call ourselves coaches, without ever coaching anyone, because we never meet them where they are.

In real life, several course companies have problems finding students. Not so much the schools, who get their pupils by law, nor the higher educations, who still maintain a reputation for being needed if you want a good life. But all those others, providing language teaching, yoga teaching, etc., because their expected customers instead find something on the internet, trying to save money but ending up paying much more, as the many useless courses accumulate and, in total, end up costing more than a local, physically based, course.

Effectively, we now have many more teachers, but fewer people learn anything.

Instead, we are all on a journey, restlessly seeking what we don’t know that we need — to be met by a coach who understands what we need and will help us get it.

We are all just flying around like flies in a bottle, getting nowhere, but the course and coaching industry is thriving, claiming that this means that huge amounts of people are gaining new skills.

Lifelong learning becomes a lifelong pointless searching for something we don’t know what is, a lifelong waiting for Godot to appear.