Education: MasterChef as an educational model?! John Carroll thinks so.
First there is a level of seriousness with which both professionals and amateurs approach their cooking as if it was the most important thing in the world for them. They were absorbed – body mind and soul – what they were doing straining with every fibre of their will their talent and their capacity for concentration on the task in hand. Here was vocation in the high sense.
As a consequence of the intense seriousness the particular contests were fraught anxiety-laden and hotly competitive: competitive against the other contestants but more of each person against himself or herself competing against their own standard.
The program exemplified the virtues of the age-old master-apprentice model of teaching. The judges led by example. They watched over the cooking with care and concern. They clearly enjoyed tasting the dishes presented by the amateurs and exuded enthusiasm when impressed. Their comments were eloquent precise and fair alternatively unflinchingly tough or warmly generous when appropriate. They were compassionate with failure.
The amateurs were eager to learn and did. Even the traditional terminology was used: the contestants were called “amateur” chefs and the judges “professional”. The professionals were admirable for the quality of their work as chefs and as a food critic. The show acted as a teaching model. It was conservative in the best sense displaying the singular virtue of the master-apprentice method of learning. It exhibited respect and care across generations. It celebrated a passion for excellence.
Teachers need to be respected for their own excellence practising their craft in a strict regimen judging toughly encouraging dispassionately caring for those under their tutelage that they will develop into professionals who may one day fill their own shoes.
The master chef is by definition a master. He has earned respect and with that respect comes authority. One dimension of being a master is setting the terms in which he will teach: he is the best judge of how to pass on his knowledge to apprentices.
Those who witness excellence in others may be inspired to lift the bar I relation to what they do themselves. Likely they will sense that a moral spotlight has reflected back on them one which illuminates any casualness in their own central life activities where they might act in a careless or a sloppy manner. They may then feel guilt for having broken some fundamental communal law which indeed they have. Here is supreme pedagogy teaching by example the more powerful for the fact that the teacher is not in any formal sense a “teacher” and is not intending to teach.