We teachers are actually communication professionals, we live in
dialogue. We try to transmit the message about important
information to our students in many different ways: speaking,
writing, showing, and of course also via electronic media. We
also try to convey ideas, perspectives, ideologies and concepts,
and yet it is up to students to choose whether they want to
learn all that, or not. Communication in education must be
reciprocal. This also presents the need for open and honest
interpersonal relations between teachers and students, because
that builds trust and helps students choose to become involved
in their own learning. I have often joked about best teachers
being the master manipulators. Now how does that fit together
with the open and honest communication? It actually does. Being
a non-native speaker of English I frequently need to visit
dictionary pages to gain more understanding about words. Often I
seem to have a different connotation to a certain word – like
manipulation, which doesn’t sound