ABSTRACT
Teaching and learning are rooted in and are dependent upon a common language between teacher and student. Language is rooted in and is an aspect of culture. Culture is nothing, more nor less, than the shared ways that groups of people have created to use and define their environment. All people, every group of people on the face of the earth, have created culture. Therefore, they have also created language, which is included in culture. Children all over the world learn to speak the language of their cultural group at about the age of two. Teaching and learning is a worldwide phenomenon. The teaching function and the learning function have occurred in every culture on earth. It is natural and not the exclusive property of any group or groups. Teaching and learning—the transmission of cultural heritage—is as old as the human family. All cultures are intellectually complicated and cognitively demanding.
