Why Wise Teachers Slow Down
In an education world obsessed with speed, whether in content delivery, curriculum coverage, or accelerated progress, thoughtful teachers do something nowadays considered radical, but in the not-too-distant past, considered simply sensible.
They slow down.
Not out of indolence and not because they are falling behind. But because they understand something many in the system do not: that speed is not the same as learning.
They know that slowing down, paradoxically, is what allows pupils to speed up later. That real fluency, real understanding, and real independence are only ever the result of careful, deliberate practice and not of racing through schemes of work.
A while ago, I shared on social media a little experiment I carried out with some of pupils, in which I asked them to remember a four-digit number while solving some basic arithmetic problems. They managed well. But when I raised it to six or seven digits, most began to falter.
What was happening?
The tasks they thought they were fluent in (they were working on adding, subtracting, and spotting factors) were in fact not fluent. They were automatic, which is to say they could do them quickly and mostly correctly, but only when they had the full focus of attention.
Fluency, by contrast, means performing without needing to attend.
It is the foundation of higher-order thinking, because it frees up the mind to explore, reason, and connect.
And this is why great teachers slow down.
Because they’re not content with automaticity. They are aiming for fluency.
Curriculum maps often look like train timetables: Year 7, Term 1, Week 4, we must be here by now. But human learning doesn’t work like that.
The most effective teachers know that that some concepts are worth dwelling on. Not everything is equally weighted. Not everything deserves the same tempo.
A wise teacher might spend weeks on a topic, or days on one single, brilliant question, because they understand that this is where the leverage is. That a secure grasp here will unlock dozens of future ideas.
They aren’t afraid to appear to others as though they are “behind schedule.” They are working to a deeper purpose than being judged well against some curriculum rubric.
To be clear, slowing down isn’t about dithering.
It is not an excuse to meander or avoid challenge. In fact, it often requires greater planning and greater skill. To truly hold attention, to orchestrate practice, to vary representations, and to intervene precisely is significantly more challenging than ploughing through a curriculum at a predetermined pace.
The best teachers slow down not to do less, but to do better.
Not to cover less, but to uncover more.
They understand that every pupil who leaves their classroom with shaky knowledge is a liability to their future self.
So they slow down.
To avoid teaching twice.
To avoid reteaching under pressure.
To make it stick the first time.
And slowing down is not just necessary for pupils to learn well, but also for teachers to thrive. When schools speed up every minute of the day, they erode the very conditions in which great teaching happens. And when teachers are denied time to pause, talk, think, and breathe, their lessons can only become more frantic, more brittle, more transactional.
The best teachers are not slow because they’re cautious. They’re slow because they are strategic. They are investing time, not spending it. They are sowing understanding, not just scattering content.
They know that pupils who are given time to build fluency, true fluency, will become more confident, more curious, and more capable of exploring the mathematical universe, or the literary canon, or the history of the world.
And they know that what we remember longest… is rarely what we rushed.
And to end on a song,
“Slow down, you’re moving too fast… you got to make the learning last.”
— (Not quite) Simon & Garfunkel