Teaching is an activity, the 'elders' of all forms of life do. And, one can comfortably say, no difficulties have ever been observed in teaching the arts, each of those is a master of. But, it is a big challenge, as far as humans go, if the proliferation of teaching aids be taken as an indication. We humans are taking no note of this, saying, all species of life (except human!) have nothing much to teach. And we have no problem in accepting happily, the rather incongruous conclusion that a superior species, who possess greater capacity to learn, will need a lot of teaching. Why is it that we have to teach a lot. Is there no other way?
Let us see, how do we teach, presently?
We decide, what one should learn, how, when, etc. (Or we choose someone to decide things like these)
Then we formulate a plan to have it done in an appropriate manner. Like, choosing a suitable time to teach, deciding who will teach, what, and how. Now, almost all choices in this regard are more or less the same as that of the earliest of times, except for timely variation of the same.
As time went by, much changed. We have been adapting ourselves to those changes, as and when they occur. (Of course, patting ourselves for instituting the change!)
Are we teaching optimally? I do not think so. In fact, wherever we can afford, we are still living in a geocentric universe. So, unless it is impossible, we continue with the old.
Once again, look at the way we confront the issue of teaching. It seems, we have not at all deviated from whatever was the earliest style of teaching, we have been following. The salient features of which, perhaps was a good fit for the society, then. People would not have been having a good idea about the outward show of things, and almost nothing about its internal make up. They could overcome such a shortcoming by resorting to large collections of abstractions. Accordingly, a style of teaching would have evolved that mainly consisted of making the wards able to identify and describe the abstract concepts and ideas of whatever is chosen to learn. At a much later stage, or perhaps as necessary or convenient, they would have been familiarizing with all those, in actual use. Now, we are sticking to the same style, even though, we have a totally different idea about things and ideas. We are more familiar with real things and functional ideas than the abstract equivalents, unlike the past.
If we use the same style of teaching, as one can easily see, those at the receiving end of a lesson are not likely to be, naturally ready to pick up the lesson. All those concepts and other abstract ideas will be totally new to them, and also of little relevance to the chosen area of study. We are very much aware of it, and we realize the need to have different styles of teaching for various subjects. Now, rather than examining the aptness of teaching in this age old style, we go on a spree to invent and fabricate different mechanisms or aids to turn this mode of teaching into an interesting and fruitful activity. Yes, we think, we have been succeeding in this. So, as centuries go by, and, perhaps with some changes in hardware, we continue to remain with the same style of teaching.
Should it be so? Are we as successful as what we would have been, had our style of teaching been keeping with the times? (Logically, human race, everywhere, would have been keeping with the times. But, their propensity to abstract, did the damage. In doing so, they could easily redefine the hardware in their life to absorb much of the changes without making a hardware change. As a consequence, none of them realize the mismatch that existed between the nature of reality and their appreciation of it. That is why, though even from the days of the early Greece, much of reality is appreciated well enough, human race had a long wait to industrial revolution, to reap its benefits.)
What am I getting at? We can learn one thing from our experience of teaching the young. Abstraction is of great help, especially to make things that are otherwise unclear, clear. And, it can explain the proliferation of abstract musings in whatever literary gems of the past, we happen to uncover. Quite understandably, the thinkers of the past, just like everybody else of those days, were unclear about almost everything. But, now, the situation is different. We are clouding the atmosphere of knowledge, when we abstract. Keeping this in mind, we can arrive at a new pattern of teaching, where, all that is abstract is kept for the last.
Learning can now take place, as I proposed
