“I taught them that two weeks ago, so they should still remember it now.”
“Well, I taught them that before the holidays, so I doubt they’ll remember much now!”
“They should know that, I already taught it to them – but it’s always in one ear and out the other!”
The teacher’s role is to teach – and teach they do! – but the meaning implicit in this action and this role is that learning will occur as a result of teaching, and that the learning will (hopefully) lead to deep understanding and critical thinking. So why are these commonly uttered phrases founded on a teacher-centric view of subject matter conveyance? Well, to be fair, people take short-cuts when speaking, and of course this plays a part in the formation of these statements, however, I believe there is something deeper in these remarks. The assumption that “I taught them” is interchangeable with “they learned” is fallacious: even when this conveyed knowledge is able to be reproduced under test conditions it does not indicate something that has been truly learned. To interact and engage with a topic is to grapple with it, and to project oneself into the world in which it exists. Where once a topic lay dormant and unknown, when it is learned it comes alive, and is seen from the individual’s perspective: the nature of the topic has not itself changed, but rather the student’s relationship to it has been altered.
When a teacher says something along the lines of, “They should remember it because I already taught it to them”, they are doing a number of things. Firstly, they are shifting the responsibility for learning from teacher to student, placing the onus on the student to remember this thing that has been taught. This is, of course, a necessary aspect of teaching and learning, as students must, at some stage, take account of their own learning, albeit, this generally occurs under the guidance of the teacher, and only when learning is taking place. A teacher cannot reasonably assume that their students will recall everything that they teach, but when a student truly grapples with a topic, projects themselves onto it, then I believe it remains as a withstanding part of them. This will not, and likely cannot, occur in relation to every topic being taught in every subject at school, and will be different for each individual student also, but if the teacher approaches each topic as tough it will be the pinnacle of scholastic endeavour for at least one student, then I believe that it can indeed be.
Secondly, the teacher is disregarding the possibility that their approach to the teaching of that topic was ineffective for some students. Again, students are required to shoulder some of the responsibility for voicing their concerns with teaching methods or seeking clarifications during classtime or outside of it, but the teacher must always acknowledge that perhaps they did not effectively reach every student. If a minority of students struggled with the content it is possible that it was not presented in their favoured learning style, they had not eaten breakfast, they were tired from playing sport at lunch time etc. However, if the majority of the class struggled to grapple with the content the teacher must then re-examine their approach to its teaching, being open to the possibility that their method was not appropriate for that class group.
Thirdly, the teacher is perpetuating the assumption that an interchangeable relationship exists between the terms ‘taught’ and ‘learned’. Teaching is not the same act as learning, and thus imbues different results as a consequence – but the two are indeed connected. As Friere (1993) explains, successful teaching itself requires learning on the teacher’s behalf, and successful learning is of course belied by informed teaching. “When I teach what I know, to students who supposedly do not know, I am teaching to the curiosity of the students. Their curiosity teaches me. It teaches me to re-know what I already knew.”
I think it is imperative for all teachers to remain vigilant of the implications of their words and the significance they possess for their teaching. The most-labelled of men himself effortlessly explains all of the concepts I have raised and so I shall leave you with his own remarks on the matter:
“The teacher grows by teaching the object to be grasped by the students. If the students don’t grasp the object with their bare hands, the students only memorize the description, but they don’t know the object. Knowing is not a question of memorization. It is a question of acquiring the object.. Knowing…is kind of an adventure. Knowing is a reinvention of the object being known. It is a recreation. It is a mutual process of teaching and learning. The more the teacher refuses to learn with the students, the less the teacher teaches.” (Freire 1993, as quoted in Wink, 2011, p104)
– For Science!
References
Wink, J. (2011). Where in the world did critical pedagogy come from? (Ch. 3). Critical pedagogy: Notes from the real world (4th ed, pp. 91-141). Upper Saddle River, USA: Pearson.
Synergistic Bonding in the Classroom! 