Teaching is different from Learning!!

“Over 160 years ago, Horace Mann, American educator and founder of the first school for teacher education in the United States (1839), wrote, “The ability to acquire and the ability to impart are wholly different talents. The former may exist in the most liberal manner without the latter”

The ability to acquire is the power of understanding the subject manner of investigation where as aptness to teach involves the power of perceiving how far a scholar understands the subject matter to be taught, and how he puts into steps so that it make a good story for to catch the interest of the learner. Teaching is the highest form of understanding. It involves the power of discovering and of solving at the time the exact difficulty by which the learner is embarrassed. The removal of a slight impediment, the drawing aside of the thinnest veil which happens to divert his vision is worth more to him than volumes of lore on collateral subjects. Professors known as outstanding lecturers do two things; they use a simple plan and many examples. (W. McKeachie)


Aptness to teach includes the presentation of the different parts of a subject in a natural order. Thought flows in terms of stories - stories about events, stories about people, and stories about intentions and achievements. The best teachers are the best story tellers. We learn in the form of stories
If a child is told that the globe is about 25,000 miles in circumference before he has any conception of the length of a mile, the statement is not only utterly useless as an act of instruction but it will probably prevent him ever afterward from gaining and adequate idea of the subject. The novelty will be gone, and yet the fact unknown. To acquire a few of the facts gives us fragments only; and even to master all the facts, but to obtain them promiscuously, leaves what is acquired so unconnected and loose that any part of it may be jostled out of place and lost, or remain only to mislead.
In its broadest sense, learning can be defined as a process of progressive change from ignorance to knowledge, from inability to competence, and from indifference to understanding....In much the same manner, instruction-or education-can be defined as the means by which we systematize the situations, conditions, tasks materials, and opportunities by which learners acquire new or different ways of thinking, feeling, and doing.
Most models [of learning] assume that the purpose of learning is to incorporate new information or skills into the learner's existing knowledge structure and to make that knowledge accessible. . . . Learning begins with the need for some motivation, an intention to learn. The motivation, the incentive, the reward for the acquisition of information must be built into the program itself. External rewards are not motivators. At every step the learner must receive satisfaction from the act of learning and from doing it right. The learner must then concentrate attention on the important aspects of what is to be learned and differentiate them from noise in the environment. While those important aspects are being identified, the learner accesses the prior knowledge that already exists in memory, because a key to learning is connecting what is known to what is being learned. New information must be processed, structured, and connected in such a way as to be accessible in the future; this process is known as encoding. The deeper the processing of the information in terms of its underlying organization, the better the learning and later retrieval of that information. This processing requires active involvement . The learner must verify an understanding of the structure by receiving feedback, from the internal and external environments, on the encoding choices made.
. Learning can only be done by the learner. It cannot be done by the “teacher.” The teacher can only be a help to learning. The pupil who needs external pushing and supervision for learning will not learn. All the information, all the affirmation, and all the motivation should lie in the process of learning itself. Teaching has a lot more to do with perception, understanding and arrangement of the knowledge to be imparted than it has to do, apparently, with intellect.
How well do your presentations, your training, meet these criteria? If we are boring people, they will stop learning.

He who is apt to teach is acquainted, not only with common methods for common minds but with peculiar methods for pupils of peculiar dispositions and temperaments; and he is acquainted with the principles of all methods where by he can vary his plan according to any difference of circumstances.
In the workplace, as well, we would be wise to remember that teaching is an art that must be adapted to the learners learning patterns and by those with an aptitude to teach. In both our schools and workplaces, we need to enable students to learn and teachers to teach.