The History of Teaching
Learning is something that most organisms do consciously in order to survive. For humans, of course, learning is much more complicated than it is for our fellow members of the animal kingdom. Over the hundreds of thousands of years of human existence, we have devised many ways to transfer information and experience to others. Here is a very brief history of teaching that can be used to help devise ways to reach all kinds of people.
Other People Are Reading
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Mimicry
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The first way that babies learn is by mimicking what they see others doing, and we don't stop learning by example for the rest of our lives. Some of the first teaching doubtless occurred when one prehuman figured out something useful (a better way to open fruit?) and another saw, adopting the technique for himself.
Ancient Wisdom--Confucius
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Born in 561 B.C.E. (Before Common Era), Confucius imparted his personal wisdom, releasing the information in the form of deep sayings that worked by encouraging the student to process the true meaning for himself. According to Teacher Appreciation, Confucius was also "the first private teacher in history." In a time when there was no formal public education, Confucius worked with a single student, usually the child of a rich nobleman.
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Ancient Wisdom -- Socrates
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Working with small groups, Socrates developed the Socratic Method, a form of education that is still extremely powerful today. A teacher, who (one hopes) has more wisdom than the student, asks pointed questions to guide the learner on her own journey. In this way, the learning is internal, undertaken on one's own. According to W. N. Hailman, an expert in the history of pedagogy, Socrates understood that "what his pupils knew they had learned by their own self-active efforts, and that he had only aided them in becoming conscious of their ideas."
Public Schools Begin
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Although it seems strange, public schools were not so prevalent in the United States. According to a PBS program on the history of education, until Horace Mann decided to change things in Massachusetts, "school students attended classes for only a few weeks each winter, often in poorly equipped schoolhouses with untrained teachers." Soon, he expanded the school year to six months and "gathered support for more funding for teacher salaries, books and school construction."
The 20th Century
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After the evolution of the kindergarten through 12 grade public school system, there was a big problem in American education that wasn't addressed until the 1950s: segregation. Previous court decisions allowed states to provide separate schools for white and black children. In 1954, the Supreme Court decision of Brown vs. Board of Education decreed that "separate but equal" is not an acceptable situation. After some years of harsh adjustment, segregation no longer existed. By the late 1960s, teachers were forced to introduce more social issues into the classroom as a result of this and other conditions in the country. English teachers also began to teach with more introspective styles, encouraging journaling and other expressive writing.
Now and the Future
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Since the GI Bill allowed an unprecedented number of young men to attend, college has become a necessity more than a luxury. Teachers are now educated in university teaching programs before getting state certification (depending on the rules in their area). Thanks to the technological advances of the past 30 years, teachers are introducing more multimedia aspects in the classroom. In addition to teaching "reading, writing and arithmetic," teachers must help students figure out safe and professional ways of using digital media, including the Web and social networking applications. It is certainly a far cry from Socrates' classroom: a simple olive grove.
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