On the Question of Quality...

" 'Quality,' or 'value,' as described by Pirsig, cannot be defined because it empirically precedes any intellectual construction of it, namely due to the fact that quality (as Pirsig explicitly defines it) exists always as a perceptual experience before it is ever thought of descriptively or academically" - Wikipedia

Pirsig's thoughts ring like an echo through my head as I read of his thoughts on quality. Not because I have read about Pirsig's ideas before, but because I remember once reading (although I have displaced the title and author of the article) about how objectivity is impossible for humans since we first react on an emotional level. Being as any fair system of ranking requires objectivity, how could we ever possibly rank things according to their "quality"? 

Yet that jumps too far ahead. That is, we should first establish what quality is before we worry about trying to rank it. And I am going to do this by asking the question: what do all humans want/need? Of course we could look at Maslow's hierarchy of needs to answer this, but I'm going to refer back to something I've stated in previous entries; we need to connect. To each other, to the world around us, to something and maybe even to everything. Therefore, what we perceive as a good, quality work must be something that satisfies this desire.

Being as I am a student studying to be a teacher, I would like to examine this idea from a classroom perspective.

Think of your favorite teacher. What made them your favorite? Did they reach out to you personally (connecting person to person)? Did they have a good classroom atmosphere (connection in community)? Were they effective in getting you to remember the material (forming connections in your mind)? The fact of the matter is that what one student perceives as great instruction could be perceived as utter horse shit from another; it is an entirely subjective experience based on the perspective of the individual. In this way- teaching can not be ranked by quality. 

But what about the horrible teachers we know we have all had? What about the classes wherein we feel completely out of the circuit and don't seem to learn anything? What could be said about those teachers? Well, coming back to the idea of connection, I would say those teachers did not know how to connect (to the information, to the students, to whatever) very well. But just because 90% of the class felt that the teacher was doing a bad job, that 1 kid that felt the teacher was doing well is the only proof needed to say that the teacher possesses quality in his/her methods. That teacher may connect to a much smaller degree than your favorite teacher, but they are connecting all the same.

The conclusion that I am then lead to is that quality, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder.