If I say I teach people but they do not learn is it their fault or mine? If they do not learn then can I assert that I really taught them? The word, "teach" must carry the implication of learning on the part of students. One teacher was heard to say, “I taught them that last term and they did not learn it.” Was that his fault or theirs? Did he really teach them if they did not learn? And to what degree is this inefficiency carried on in schools all over the globe.
Everywhere there are teachers beavering away and preparing lessons which their pupils will not understand or will fail to learn for one reason or another. Maybe the mind of the pupil is elsewhere. Maybe he or she has come to a point where they do not understand something because it has not been explained. More likely the pupil has lost the thread of it because his mind has wandered or he was bored with it all and is daydreaming at the time.
It must follow, then, that the moment attention is lost, a breakdown of communication occurs. At that point the student is no longer learning, nor is the teacher teaching. Does that mean that the teacher has to compel or to attract the student's attention? Can this be done all the time for all the class of pupils or of students? Can a teacher possibly do this while at the same time keeping track of the planned content of the lesson he or she believes himself to be teaching? It seems an impossible task, and it probably is an impossible task.
Do we compel attention with sanctions such as detentions, lines or the threat of failure? Do we make our lessons so entertaining that the students remember the jokes or the asides but forget, if they ever learned, what the lesson was supposed to be about? How sad that only a few of our pupils and students will have learned only a fraction of what we set out to teach and that fraction imperfectly. Some of the students are likely to be disaffected, some to be dreaming and some only feigning attention so that even if one gives out punishments to those whose attention is seen to be wandering there will inevitably be those whose wide-eyed interest is but a mask behind which the mind is traveling, if not "on wings of song," certainly to "lands far away".
There are teachers who have the reputation for discipline and who are, for some reason feared by many of their pupils. Some pupils, however, see through the persona and the charade to the fearful and troubled soul beneath. These despise those they ought to respect for we surely do not learn except from those we respect and who, in their turn have a love and respect for learning. Not that this love and respect for learning is enough to capture the interest and the fancy of those pupils who are disillusioned, antipathetic or merely uninterested, not to mention those who are hurting, neglected or suffering in some way.
Young people can spot hypocrisy and inconsistency. One of the reasons that state schools in the developed world are generally dislike by their pupils is because they are regimented into a false social system which has many aspects of the military about it. Their antipathy is deepened because the teachers, those who are put in charge of the youngsters, have little love for the job, nor for their pupils. Pupils in a school and students in a college are to be improved and made better by the system they have to undergo if we understand by "education" that the person to be educated must be improved. We would not think it education if its clients were corrupted and made worse, morally, intellectually or physically, by the system.
Why are teachers in the job anyway. There may be many reasons but a lot cannot find anything else to do. There is some truth in the saying, “those who can, do; and those who cannot do, teach”. It is not true in every case and there are those highly gifted but unconventional pedagogues to whom this proverb does a grave injustice. These are there because they love learning and their own branch of it. They also understand the purpose of education in the improvement of the pupil and delight to give themselves to that end. In many cases they do this to their own apparent disadvantage. At least to their disadvantage in terms of material gain and status. Few of these ever become headteachers or principals of colleges. On the other hand there are many who early set themselves to climb the promotional ladder and make that their main aim.
