Learning and Love

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First, there is no love story involved in this post, this is mainly one dilemma that many teachers from where I am from have to face. This dilemma is whether to merely prepare students for exams or help them understand a concept or topic. However, I do not want to sound overly academic nor dry on a topic such as this, so I will be relating this to my simple understanding of romantic love.

A little bit of background, I have been teaching for seven years and I have been married for six years. So merging both concepts should be interesting. One issue I deal with when teaching is to either help the students grasp a particular concept better or train them for exams. Often times both are not the same as there are methods to train a student for the exam without having them understand any of the concepts being taught. This is much like love, but seeing that love can be a much more complicated subject as compared to learning, I will limit this to either being truly in love and loving the idea of being in love.

Both concepts of learning and love are very different but there are certain similarities. As such, even if you are not a teacher, you should be able to relate to this. So let us start with the first point, which is sustainability.

Sustainability

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Much like learning, love is sustainable if done right, you can love the idea of being in love with someone and end up realizing that it was not what you want all along after a long period of time. This is also a trend that I have seen in graduates, mind you, I am referring to the eastern contest and more or less the context of where I teach in. There are many graduates that I see entering into university with extremely good results. However, their ability to problem solve and understanding certain subjects is found to be lacking.

If one were to do a study, you would find that these students who scored well were trained to do so in school. As such, their ability only extends as far as the school's final exam. Once that is completed and they enter into universities, they will find that everything that they have learnt is not applicable. However, there are many average students who may not have done as well as compared to the aforementioned excellent students, but are able to do well in university. This is because they were exposed to problem solving and such skills do benefit them in their tertiary education.

If a teacher so chooses to prepare the students for exams only, it is akin to loving the idea of being in love. You love being in a relationship, but you do not fully grasp the sacrifice nor effort to make the relationship. As such, the sustainability of such relationships or such learning methods remain questionable. While some reading this may disagree, I suppose at the end of the day, a question that we have to ask ourselves is:

Who do you live for?

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Much like the difference between learning just to pass exams and learning because you want to learn, if you love someone, you would place them first compared to placing yourself first when you just love the idea of being in love. As teachers, I think we feel a better sense of achievement when we help our students achieve an understanding of the lesson that we teach. Nothing beats the excitement of having the whole class participate and ask question because they are interested in the lesson. The good grades at the end of it all, is just a byproduct of a teacher living for the students, helping them learn better.

However, if a teacher tries to help the students do well in exams, this would likely include a lot of memorizing and constant practices. While this may achieve good grades, it shifts the focus away from teaching and learning to the students living for the exams, which can be rather stressful. Similarly, if two people in a relationship have an understanding of living for each other, sacrificing and putting effort into making the relationship work, the end result would be a happy relationship that could weather any challenge. The same however cannot be said for a relationship where the focus is just themselves and not the other.

Conclusion

A final note in this post is that it is not my intention to question any teacher's ability to teach. I understand that there are constraints. Sometimes we are forced to focus on exams because parents and our superiors demand so. However, it is my hope that some who do not understand how learning works can see how it should be. When we place a huge focus on just exam results, we are trying to quantify learning and that is often not a reliable assessment.

I mean, you will not ask someone to put a score to the love they have for you. As such, learning should be no different as it is the quality and not the quantity that matters. Thank you for reading, do let me know your thoughts in the comments below. As always, I rate my love for you as an A+.

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