The Starting Principles of Teaching and Learning!

If teaching is to be interpreted as a process of stimulating- directing, and guiding the learner, the teacher
must have an intensive knowledge and understanding of the physical, mental, and emotional potentialities
of those whose educational activities he hopes to direct and guide

.Equally important is a thorough understanding of the psychological principles that govern human
behaviour, especially in relation to the teaching and learning processes.

The starting principles of teaching deal with the nature of the child who is to be educated.The history of
education reveals to us that Rousseau was the first great writer to insist that education should be based
upon the nature of the child. His book Emile has been called the “gospel of educational freedom for the
child.” Rousseau believed that the process of education should gravitate around the child.He stated
further at the nature of the child rather than the logical order of the subject-matter should determine the
nature of teaching. To Rousseau, education must be according to nature. It should aim simply to insure the
free development of those potentialities with which nature endowed the child.These new thoughts from
Emile reveal the nature of the New Education and disclose a sure basis for a science of teaching founded
on the principles of learning. Like Rousseau, Pestalozzi emphasized the importance of the nature of the
child and propounded that in the educative processes, the child must be thought of in relation to the
subject-matter.He sought to understand the nature of the children and to build his teaching around the
“natural, progressive, and harmonious development of all the powers and capacities of the human being.”
Pestalozzi desired to develop children according to the natural laws. Early educators like Froebel and
Herbart built education upon this foundation.They conceived of education as a natural development of
innate powers. They also realized the value of natural growth and development. Thorndike likewise
recognizes the nature of the child as the first principle for all education.He believes that it is just a principle
of education to utilize any individual’s original nature as a means of changing him for the better, to instill in
him the knowledge and produce in him the habits, powers, interests, and ideals which are desirable.John
Dewey is also in agreement with those who believe that education should center on the individual child,
but he takes the view that the child must be considered as a member of the group. This point of view has
led to the development of what is generally known today as the “Child-Centered-School.”Many of the so-
called progressive schools are of this type. Insight into the child’s nature and sympathy with the child’s life
are really essential to efficient and successful teaching. Without these, scholarship will fail and methods
and devices will avail little.The human aspect of education should receive great emphasis. Teachers and
educators in general have given so much attention to the acquisition of subject-matter that they tend to
think less of the pupil. Education should begin with the proper training and direction of the child’s original
tendencies and needs.Our native equipment has been called by various names.According to Avent,
“original nature includes tendencies, possibilities, capacities, instincts, reflexes, emotions, and the like,
which are affected by man’s biological and ethnic heredity. The possibility of teaching along any line
depends upon the presence of an original nature which possesses corresponding abilities.”All original
traits, whether racial, sex, or family, are inherited through the plastic nervous system. The racial
inheritance, the capital which all normal children bring into this world, is usually discussed and
conveniently classified under several heads: reflexes, iostincts, opacities, emotions, temperaments, etc.
the particular beads Chosen, vary with the author.The skillful teacher is one who will constantly seek to
utilize to the-fullest extent those tendencies which seem most potent. This, however, does not’s mean
merely a blind following of these instinctive tendencies, but often the substitution of a higher form of
action for a lower one which may be related to the ability or capacity in question.