Teaching is a misnomer

 Teaching: Half the world does it, the rest of the world is afflicted by it.

It is a disease that afflicts everything from the lowest custodians of knowledge to the highest temples of learning. From the municipal school in interior India to the physics departments of Princeton and Stanford.

Why do we teach ? So that the learner can learn. But can the learner be taught anything merely by bouncing sound waves on her eardrums, and showing her some associated visuals to form an image on her retina ? Obviously this is a gross exaggeration, what a teacher teaches cannot be termed as random sound waves and visuals. However if you think about it, this description is not too far off the mark.

A human mind is very non linear, very random, very self motivated. How then can you tell this human mind to sit straight, at a fixed time and listen to what quadratic equations are, what is the atomic model or what is raoult's law ?

If a human mind is not motivated or primed about something, anything related to that something will appear pretty much as random sound and visual. So in my slightly radical opinion teaching is a misnomer, it does not exist, you cannot teach, because you cannot simply set a time for a human mind to be curious about a particular topic at a particular time, make it sit in a constrained bodily posture, ask it to not express any thoughts, then present ideas without context or motivation and then expect it to absorb all of that. Why, so that they can clear some random exams that have been determined by some random people as markers of knowledge or skill.

Its a sheer waste of everyone's effort, what is ? This whole education system. Now one can argue, how can a system that is a sheer waste produce so much success, as is so many Nobel laureates, lawyers who know their job, doctors who can treat so many patients etc ? Now that would bring us the the definition of success. To me what the education system is able to achieve is just the bare minimum. 

Imagine a 4-5 billion people every year passing out after 15-16 years of 'education' , and contrast that with the number of fully functional, successful, stellar individuals. Also juxtapose figures of the number of people who are into blind faith, the number of exam induced and education system induced suicides every year, juxtapose the number of unfit freshers, etc. etc. and one will realize that the positive numbers are only a drop in the ocean.

According to me after being immersed in learning for 15-16 years of one's life, every individual has the capacity to be a highly civilized, articulate, logical, rational, problem solving and happy individual, who can contribute like an experienced professional in any field. Forget freshers who are unfit to work, I feel 15-16 years of learning can make a person capable of working like an experienced professional who is an expert not only in one field but multiple different ones.

Where the current system loses the plot is in completely overlooking the curious creative nature that every individual is born with.

Can the world set aside it's obsession for teaching, can the more experienced and knowledgeable people set aside their egos and be part of discussion groups and become groomers rather than teachers glowering from a pulpit to ears and minds that are really not seeking what they have to offer ?

Can learning be natural, spontaneous, conversational, multi directional, rather than uni-directional (from teacher to student) ?

Imagine a curious learner who has spent more than 15 years as a learner, learning art, music, science, engineering, history etc etc. Can this not have the capacity to completely transform society, into one that is full of knowledgeable, creative, humane, enlightened people ? 

The second question is, do we really want such people ? Do we as a society want mass enlightenment ?

That will decide whether we want teaching and teachers or learning and learners.