The difference between teaching and training

The Commentary in the University page (The Sunday Times, September 19) made some pretty bold statements, such as:

"It is very rare to find students to join the B.Ed. course with high grades in their science A-levels."

"In the B.Ed. course, there is perhaps not sufficient time for students with sciences as a main option to get enough specialisation in the science subject to be able to give optimal teaching at secondary and even more so at A-level standard".

The writer also suggested that only BA and B.Sc. students with PGCE should teach at secondary level and above, and the B.Ed. (Hons.) course should cater exclusively for prospective primary school teachers.

Being a secondary school Mathematics teacher whose first degree is B.Ed. (Hons.), and having also taught A-level Pure Mathematics elsewhere for a number of years, I feel I must reply to these comments.

When I started the B.Ed. (Hons.) course in 1993 I had a very clear intention of what I wanted to do with my life. At that time, I could have opted for a B.Sc. and my A-level grades were high enough to pursue that course and others such as Architecture and Engineering. But I wanted to become a teacher so I chose B.Ed. (Hons.), and I never regretted that choice.

The course consisted of more than 106 credits (14 hours each). Less than half of these were credits we took with B.Sc. students, which we called content units, and these added up to exactly two-thirds of the mathematics units taken up by the B.Sc. students during the three years of their course.

The mathematics involved was so specialised that except for a few units, the content involved was way beyond A-level. Any more content units could not have made us more proficient in the subject matter involved to teach up to A-level.

The other half of the course consisted of:

Units in the Psychology, Philosophy and Sociology of Education, which dealt with fundamental questions, such as: what is education; who is the student; why should everybody be educated; how can a student be discriminated against; what is the status of the teacher as compared with that of the student;

Methodology units which aimed at preparing students to teach particular areas of the subject;

Pedagogy units ranging from units on examinations and assessment to units on teaching students with special needs;

Four six-week teaching practices (one a year) and a dissertation based on an original research on education in Malta.

Now I must admit that I hardly recall half of the theorems and proofs we did in the content part. I know that if I need them I can open the right book and look for the magic word in the index. It was the second part of the course that stuck in my mind for good. The foundation principles of education, pedagogy, and methodology are part and parcel of the duties of a teacher. I continuously find myself evaluating my lessons against criteria I have pondered and come to accept during my four-year experience in the B.Ed. (Hons.) course.

One of the most important things I have learnt during the course is the difference between teaching and training. Teaching aims at understanding. Training aims at competent performance. Teachers are educators, and in being so, their principal goal is the development of the person. Trainers are coaches, and in being so, their principal goal is getting good results.

Teaching is the act of orienting students towards the discovery of new experiences and certain mental activities such as abstraction. Training is the act of delivering objective knowledge.

The teachers' view of the students' mind is that of a unique store of personal experiences where their role is to organise. The trainers' view of the students' mind is like that of a knowledge bank account where their role is to fill.

The good teacher is the one who instigates questions from the students. The good trainer is the one who manages to get the right answer from the students.

Teaching is a two-way communication. Training is one-way. Teaching is giving the students tools to be autonomous, self-taught, reasoning individuals. Training is giving information, rules and techniques to study by heart.

This is why I was so sad when I read the September 19 commentary and discovered that in this day and age some still view knowledge as "material" and the act of teaching as merely to "transmit it to others".

I remembered how some of my teachers from my days as a secondary and sixth form student attempted to teach just by presenting knowledge as a platter full of material for the brains to eat. No feeling. No pride. No arguing. No reasoning. No discussions. No explorations. No discoveries. Just facts, rules and skills.

These teachers thought that if they knew it they could teach it. They did not empathise with the students; their teaching and lecturing was a monologue with occasional breaks when they engaged in a bizarre dialogue with the blackboard.

These teachers contributed to a decline in the status of the teaching profession. Fortunately they were few and I had enough good teachers to be able to look up to the teaching profession as one of the most prestigious.

Thanks to hardworking lecturers, especially in the Mathematics Department in the Faculty of Education, the B.Ed. (Hons.) course has made me, and many others like me, good teachers - good educators - in secondary and post-secondary schools. Most of my peers entered the course with good A-level grades and although the Mathematics option was one of the toughest, most of us managed to obtain a good class in our degree.

There were diverse changes to improve the course over the past ten years but the backbone remained more or less the same. The Faculty is proud to admit a good number of high-achievers each year and they work hard to accomplish their ambition: to become good primary or secondary school teachers... and they do.