Writing instructions

is not my favourite pastime.
It sounds so simple. Do this, then do this, then do this. It should be easy. It isn't.
Anyone who has ever read the attempts by some non-English speakers to write instructions has probably dismissed any errors as, "Well, it's probably because they don't speak English as a first language."  But, is it just that?
If you know how to do something yourself and you cannot remember learning how to do it then writing the instructions for someone else can be very difficult. You make assumptions that you don't realise you are making. It might seem obvious that putting a cold egg from the refrigerator straight into boiling  hot water is courting disaster but it won't be.  ( I had to explain how to boil an egg recently.)
I thought of this yesterday as I was trying to write a pattern for something. I thought of it because something had come up on the news. The Opposition was saying that standards for people who want to enter the teaching profession have to be higher. They want only students who have reached a certain level to enter training for teaching. 
It may sound fine in theory but would it actually work? The brightest people are not always the best teachers. I remember one of the staff at university asking me if I could help another student who was having difficulty understanding a concept.
    "I've tried explaining more than once but  she just doesn't seem to get it. I don't know why."
I found the student. She looked at me in despair and said, "Mrs C.... says it is simple but I don't get it."
We went through the problem. Oh, that's what she meant? And then came the words, "Every time she said it she just said the same words."
No, I wasn't any smarter than the lecturer in question. I had just explained it in a different way. A friend and I did the same thing some months later with another lecturer, one of the professors. He was a brilliant man but he was not a good teacher. He had difficulty understanding that others might find it hard to understand. I still cringe as I remember how I sat there in the lecture theatre and, after he had tried to explain a very important concept three times in almost precisely the same words, I asked twenty-three questions in a row a couple of times prompted by my friend.  The professor knew what I was doing, indeed asked me to go on each time I stopped. He was testing me at the same time as he was trying to get the concept across. The dear man, a man I grew to be very fond of, came and apologised to me later and thanked me but I felt as if I was showing him up. But, he couldn't teach.  He knew he couldn't teach. I don't think training would have helped him much.
The best teachers are those who have had to make some effort to learn, who have been faced with a variety of explanations themselves and can pass those on to students. They are people who are aware that you need to know what "two" means before you can add another "two" and make "four". They know that even after that you need to understand "four". 
I have watched a Down Syndrome girl show another how to make a pom-pom. Most people would think it was impossible but she did it. Her explanation was in the simplest possible words but she still needed to be able to understand the process herself.  She did a better job than most adults could have done but it required patience. At one point she was prompted by an adult that she might need to show her student again. There was a frown and then she did but she added something - as if she instinctively understood what her student needed.
No, it's not easy. Teaching is not easy. You don't need to be highly intelligent but you do need to understand.
Of course teachers need to be intelligent but they also need to understand. They need the understanding which comes from the personal experience of learning. Intelligence and psychology can only teach you part of that.