Monday, December 6, 2010


Teaching is the highest form of understanding”
Aristotle
Sometimes teachers, particularly beginning teachers, think that as long as children are learning, educational objectives are being advanced and teaching is being properly conducted. But the learning that is occurring could be going on in the wrong manner or the content might be worthless, trivial, or even false. If so, education was not occurring. Furthermore it might be that the teacher was not teaching at all; supervision of learning is not teaching at all in some senses of the term. Or again the teacher might have been teaching but doing this in a wrong manner and thus frustrating educational ends. It is clear that not all teaching and learning is educational. So it is important to be clear about the concepts ‘teaching’ and ‘learning’ and other related notions such as ‘indoctrination’ to see how these are related to education.”
Philosophical Issues in Education: An Introduction (Cornel M. Hamm)
Wouldn’t it all be easier if teachers had students genuinely interested in their subject and if students were learning what they really want to learn and what they are good at?