Teaching

Teaching is uniquely human. Wild chimpanzees seldom teach. Their way of education is mainly based on the careful observational learning. The education of master-apprenticeship is the label for their way. The master shows the model but does not teach: There is no molding nor verbal instruction. The apprentice has the strong intrinsic motivation to make a copy of the behavior. The master is highly tolerant to the apprentice: never scolding or neglecting. Humans like to teach. Even an infant around one year old starts to teach by pointing. Humans have a lot of eye-to-eye contact, shared attention, joint attention, and social referencing. Humans are highly prosocial animals. The prosociality and the cognitive capability led us to teach other individuals.