|
Well said V.
Looking back at the last 1000 years or so of history, I see those who cannot read at the mercy of those who can far more often than the other way around. Withotu the ability to read we are dependent upon those who can to interpret and filter through laws, holy texts, scientific ideas, political events etc.
Being unable to read, and to a slightly lesser extent, being unable to write, is a handicap in the world we live in. 20,000 years ago, it wasn't. 20,000 years ago being able to move quietly through the undergrowth was a much more useful skill. But the teaching of that is a whole other matter. Most of what we needed to learn then as humans could be learned pretty much by osmosis. Parents would show and guide, and by doing the children would learn.
Parents continue to show and guide children how to live and how to do the tasks they will need to do in their lives, but many of the skills we've developed as a species require a different kind of learning and a different kind of teaching. Hence the development of teaching specific professions. Which predate the more modern desire for comprehensively educated workers by many centuries.
[eta] there seems to be a tendency in both our cultures to devalue teaching as a profession and view it almost as a form of enhanced babysitting. There's also a tendency to devalue parenting and see it as 'natural'and instinctive and therefore unskilled. It is the devaluing of parenting that leads to the devaluing of teaching. At its core it is a devaluing of the act of raising children. Most probably because that has traditionally been seen as a female role. The level of respect shown to teachers in society seems to reduce the closer to infancy the children they teach sit.
|