By analysing over 500 billion words the Google Books Ngram Viewer allows you to compare the history of terminology and language from approximately 5 million digitised books.
The graph above shows my search for the terms “teaching” and “learning” in publications between the years 1500 and 2010.
What fascinates me is how the popularity or usage of the different terms climbed and fell throughout this period. The term “Teaching” has been used more frequently since the turn of the 18th century, somewhat settling into a plateau in the last 60 years. In comparison the term “learning” seems to have more of a rollercoaster frequency in the last 500 years.
References to “learning” from 1800 fell notably in the following 100 years, to a point where “teaching” was referenced more. And then began a 75 year period where “teaching” was clearly more frequently used or referred to in published literature. Why would there have been such a decline or change in frequencies?
If you look at the references to “learning’ there seems to be some peak and trough pattern amidst an upward trend. I wonder why this was the case? Similarly why did references to “learning” fall away at the turn of the 19th century only to climb steadily again in the last 100 years? What perceptions of “learning” or cultural differences were there between the 1700s (“learning” references increase) and the 1800s (“learning” references decrease.)?
I am no historian and I am sure many of you reading this will be able to explain the information better than me – needless to say it would be interesting to explore any broad reasons or background that might effect such results.