Teaching and learning are the foundation of training and education. People tend to place either of the two first in the paradigm with different opinions on which of the two is more important. Learning is continuous throughout human life and it can be achieved in multiple ways other than formal education. Teaching, on the other hand, is a formal way of giving lessons with the expected end results being learning. The aim of this paper is to discuss how learning is more important as compared to teaching in Education.
Teaching
According to Prozesky (2000), teaching involves instruction giving to learners and helping them follow the instructions. Some researchers argue that teaching has some elements which include the teacher; deciding what should be learned by the students, helping the learners follow instructions, ensuring that the students learn, and looking after the students’ welfare in order to ensure their learning is smooth. Teaching is tutor dominated, centered, collaborative, and guided. Teaching approaches include learner and teacher-centered methods with the learner-centered approach involving the teacher as the sole and only reliable source of information.
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Traditional education mostly focuses on teaching rather than learning with the assumption that for every ounce of teaching, an ounce of learning is acquired hence the advocates of teaching emphasize its importance in a student's life. People argue that indeed learning is a teaching outcome ( Ackoff & Greenberg, 2008) . Teaching, however, is a very powerful learning tool which is essential when a learner cannot understand a concept and have to enquire from the teacher.
Learning
Educational psychologists argue that any activity that leads to behavior change can be termed as learning (Prozesky, 2000). Learning involves acquiring knowledge through being taught, experience, and studying. When it comes to learning, a teacher must not be involved. For example, children learn to walk, talk, and even eat without being taught. Teaching is only one of the different ways of learning. Learning advocators argue that people learn great deals on their own, in independent play or study, interacting, and sharing with others what they have learned.
Learning is acquired by trial and error and through doing. The responsibility of learning is on the students hence the need for the students to understand this at the early stages of schooling. The objective of education should be to learn and not to teach. During learning, a teacher is often not present and a student earns by his or her own experience (Lak, Soleimani, & Parvaneh, 2017). Advocators of learning, argue that an education system that is more focused on teaching rather than learning is flawed. They also argue that education is admirable, but there is a need to understand that nothing is worth learning that can be taught.
Conclusion
Many people argue and assume that teaching is more important than learning while the truth is, learning is more important. Given that teaching is a learning tool, it makes it inferior since the end result of every teaching activity is learning. Teaching in itself is not a goal but instead, it is meant to bring about the process of learning hence anyone who would say that teaching that does not monitor or increase learning is typically a waste of time would be correct. The fact that the learning process does not have to be controlled by a teacher makes it important since the students tend not to forget whatever it is that they have learned ( Ackoff & Greenberg, 2008) . For example, a student is taught something, memorizes it but that can be remembered only for a short and then forgotten easily but what a student does not understand and tries to learn by himself or herself is stored in their memory forever.
Ackoff and Greenberg (2008), argue that learning is more important as compared to teaching since teaching mostly focuses more on what instruments and machines can do even better than humans. They argue that it is not necessary to keep teaching and asking the students to do something that computers can do better than they can. The final goal of teaching is to allow the learners to become their own teachers and life-long learners that is, the students should have ownership of their learning hence the importance of learning and not teaching (Koonce, 2015).
References
Ackoff, R. L., & Greenberg, D. (2008). Turning Learning Right Side Up: Putting Education Back on Track (paperback) . Pearson Prentice Hall. Journal of Advances in English Language Teaching, 5 (1), 1-10
Koonce, G. L. (2015). Issues and Trends in Educational Leadership. New York: McGraw Hill.
Lak, M., Soleimani, H. & Parvaneh, F. (2017). The effect of teacher-centeredness method vs. learner-centeredness method on reading comprehension among Iranian EFL learners.
Prozesky, D. R. (2000). Teaching and learning. Community eye health , 13 (36), 60.
