There Is No Teaching Without Learning

¶ … paradox that teaching is not possible without learning. It uses sources in MLA format. Paulo Freire's quote could be "It is essential therefore, from the very beginning of the process, that the following principle be clear: namely, that although the teachers or the students are not the same, the person in charge of education is being formed or re-formed as he/she teaches, and the person who is being taught forms him/herself in this process. In this sense teaching is not about transferring knowledge or contents.

Nor is it an act whereby a creator-subject gives shape, style, or soul to an indecisive and complacent body. There is, in fact, no teaching without learning. One requires the other....Whoever teaches learns in the act of teaching, and whoever learns teaches in the act of learning." Education reforms in the modern age has become a means to struggle against time. For the Latin American especially, the struggle was between conservatism and progressivism.

A nation torn by its ancient roots and the desire to join in with modern day progressivism, the people are still in turmoil whether acceptance of modernism is the only way to achieve their goal. The root cause is inherent in the approach the people takes. Despite gaining independence in several areas, public education and its creation is still debatable among the gentry as well as the government.

Proponents for education like Paulo Freire, declare that it is more important to know that education is not merely teaching others but it is also a process through which one learns as well. Despite this oppositions believe that if they forego their roots they will forgo their culture. Here the dilemma is not the willingness to learn but it is the education system installed in the nations. Modernized educational system have integrated too much of internationalized educational modules coupled with Western culture.

Eccentrics fear incumbent educational modules will brain wash the people to forego their culture and adopt new ones, thereby remove their own existence by their own hands. However, as Freire said, in the process of teaching, one also learns. Hence, if an education model that integrates western culture then it would teach the people how the people of the world lived and by comparison how they are themselves. It would give an insight into their own culture.

What is really needed is not the installation of education but rather the implementers to participate. For instance Rigobertu Menchu mentions in her autobiographic narrative she is 23 years but has never been educated. What this implies is that there is a need for educational system that caters to such a group that do not have the means to education but have a penchant to change their condition.

Arguments against Menchu mentioned that there were many discrepancies in her account and that "cannot be the eyewitness account it purports to be." But it is clear that unless someone takes the initiatives, there can be no progress. What is then comparative education if there is no learning or no teaching. For Menchu the process is reversed. She learned before she was taught. We don't need advice, theories or books, because life itself is our teacher.

I have been made to understand in the depth of my soul what discrimination means. My life story is a tale of exploitation. I have worked and suffered hunger.. When looking back at a life such as mine and when taking in the stark reality of it, a hate for the suppressors who have brought so much suffering to a people begins to grow."[Menchu, 1983] Hence, the motivation to learn must be therefore before an education system could be erected.

Similarly, Menchu's autobiographer David Stoll believed Menchu's account did not collaborate with historic evidence. For this purpose, he ventured on a quest, interviewing hundreds of people and tracing the history of the place. Lessons from Menchu thus act the catalyst, motivating Stoll to further his knowledge. Similarly any kind knowledge cannot be acquired unless one learns of it and one cannot teach unless one learns about it first. For this reason, Freire's statement that "There is no teaching without learning" proves true.

In countries like Japan and Korea, the process of learning starts from a very fundamental level, inherent in their culture. A child learns of his/her ancestor from home, then at school. Any additional learning that needs to be done has to come from the school. However, additional learning or rather learning of other cultures will have to stem from existent education system. That means that the education system will have to accept that its students need more knowledge to become equipped with the standards of the world.

It must allow its teachers to expand, to learn from other cultures before it could be brought home. Ricardo Lagos, expressed its timeliness when he said, "...The differences between inheritors and the disinherited of the next century will be access to education. That is why education is so important." Japanese company cannot dispatch its executives to America unless they learn about the culture first. Education, is not only an advancement of knowledge only but it is an acquisition process.

A person cannot teach unless that person has learned it, experienced it him/herself. Menchu could not have narrated her life story unless she experienced it. A child cannot learn effectively from the teacher unless he/she experience it. At all levels of education, successful absorption of knowledge stems from ongoing learning process. Confucius, concludes, "From whom indeed did our Master not learn? But at the.