Over the years, I have been writing about misconceptions regarding the schooling process. The purpose of these posts is to explain why I disagree with various comments that I have heard people make about schooling. These are meant as personal thoughts rather than conclusive proof, and I will admit that I'm not always the best at explaining my thoughts. Regardless, I have decided that I should be willing to share these posts when I encounter someone online who makes an argument that I have already discussed.
There are two primary ways to look at the relationship between teaching and learning. I know that I have mentioned this before, but I'm going to mention it again. Teaching can be viewed as an equal partnership with learning or an external influence on learning. In both these cases, it is wrong to view the teaching profession as equal with learners.
In the case of an equal partnership, this can only make sense if you embrace the idea that some teaching is an internal process. The primary job of getting a learner to learn comes from the learner. The learner must develop an understanding of how he learns and use that understanding to translate lessons into a form that works for him. If teaching and learning are truly equal, you must acknowledge that learning must always be accompanied by teaching, even when this occurs away from the teaching profession.
I can go even further with this concept. To truly treat teaching and learning as equal concepts, the learning process must always be connected with the teaching process. To maximize equality, you need to minimize the distinction between the teaching process and the learning process. An argument can even be made that teaching and learning actually refer to the same process. This makes teaching very different from the teaching profession.
If we view teaching as an external influence on the learning process, you still need to acknowledge internal components to the learning process. Teaching is just one influence on getting a child to learn while the learner is exclusively involved in all of his own learning. From this viewpoint, learning is clearly a bigger component of education than teaching.
You can argue that teaching is equal to learning, but the role of the teaching profession is clearly not equal to the role of the learner in the educational process. The learner will always be far more important to his own education than his teachers.
I'm being way too nice here. Most teachers do not view themselves as equals with their students. They frequently demand full credit for what their students learn. They completely undermine the value of learning. Personally, I do not want anyone that apathetic to learning to influence the mental development of children. Children will become less interested in learning if we train them that others must be credited for their work.
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