Instruction

Instruction also must be numbered among the family of activities related to

teaching. Instructing, in fact, is so closely bound to teaching that the phrase
"giving instruction" seems only another way of saying "teaching". There seems to:
be no ease of an activity we could describe as "giving instruction" which we could
not equally and more simply describe as teaching. Nonetheless, teaching and
giving instruction are not the same thing. For there are almost endless instances
of teaching which do not involve instruction. For example, it is acceptable, and
even correct, to speak of teaching a dog to heel, to sit, or to fetch. It is, however,
less acceptable, more imprecise, and perhaps even incorrect to speak of
instructing a dog in sitting and fetching.

But why, in such contexts, is it more awkward to speak of instructing than to speak
of teaching? We need not go s to discover the answer. When we train a dog, we
give an order and then push and pull and give reward or punishment. We give
the order to sit and then push on the hindquarters precisely because we cannot
explain tile order. We cannot elaborate its meaning. It is precisely this limitation of
intelligence or communication which disposes us to speak of training a dog rather
than instructing him. What we seek to express by the phrase "giving instruction" is
precisely what we seek to omit by the word "training". Instruction seems, at heart,
to involve a kind of conversation, the object of which is to give reasons, weigh
evidence, justify, explain, conclude and so forth. It is true that whenever we are
involved in giving instruction, it follows that we are engaged in teaching; but it is
not true that whenever we are engaged in teaching, we are giving instruction.

Training vs Instructing

This important difference between training and instructing may be viewed in

another way. To the extent that instructing necessarily involves a kind
conversation, a giving of reasons, evidence, objections and so on, it is an activity
of teaching allied more closely to the acquisition of knowledge and belief than
to the promotion of habits and modes of behavior. Training, on the contrary, has
to do more with forming modes of habit and behavior and less with acquiring
knowledge and belief. Instructing, in short, is more closely related to the quest for
understanding. We can train people to do certain things without making any
effort to bring them to an understanding of what they do. It is, however, logically
impossible to instruct someone without at the same time attempting to bring him
to some understanding. What this means, stated in its simplest and most ancient
terms, is that instructing always involves matters of truth and falsity whereas
training does not. This is another reason for observing that instructing has more to
do with matters of belief and knowledge, and training more with acquiring habits
or modes of behaving. It is not therefore a bit of archaic nonsense that teaching
is essentially the pursuit of truth. It is, on the contrary, an enormously important
insight. The pursuit of truth is central to the activity of teaching because giving
instruction is central to it. That, indeed, is the purpose of the kind of conversation
indigenous ~o the concept of giving instruction. If giving instruction involves giving
reasons, 4vidence, argument, justification, then instruction is essentially related to
the search for truth.

The point is not, therefore, that instructing necessarily requires communication.

The point is rather that it requires a certain kind of communication, and that kind
is the kind which includes giving reasons, evidence, argument, etc., in order to
approach the 'truth. The importance of this fact can be seen if we consider what
happens when the conversation of instruction is centered less and less upon this
kind of communication. It takes no great powers of insight to see that in proportion
as the conversation of instruction is less and less characterized by argument,
reasons, objections, explanations, and so forth, in proportion as it is less and less
directed toward an apprehension of truth, it more and more closely resembles
what we call indoctrination. Indoctrination is frequently viewed as a method of
instruction. Indeed, we sometimes use the word "instruction" to include what we
quite openly confess is, in fact, indoctrination. Nonetheless, indoctrination is a
substantially different thing from instruction, and what is central to this difference
is precisely that it involves a different kind of conversation and therefore is
differently related to matters of truth.