Teach Or Train?
Have you thought about the difference between teaching and training? Regardless of dictionary definitions, the two words have very different meanings, especially when it comes to our power exchanges. Teaching is part of a cooperative process called education. The student and teacher cooperate to transfer knowledge to the student.
Training doesn’t require active cooperation on the part of the trainee. It’s an imperative process. The trainee will do what he is being trained to perform. Success will be rewarded, failure punished. The trainer is in charge and can do what is necessary to assure the trainee performs as desired.
I can sign up for a course in creative writing. The teacher offers knowledge for me to consume. Mrs. Lion trains me to prepare the coffee pot every day. If I fail, I get punished. If I don’t learn the lesson in creative writing, I can get a bad grade, but I don’t actively suffer. You could argue that in most cases, this is a difference without a distinction. That’s only because many people are sloppy with language.
Most people have very few occasions where they are trained. Soldiers are trained. They have to succeed or get punished. That is an unusual situation. When Mrs. Lion makes a rule or corrects me, it is a training exercise. I don’t have to want the training. I have to accept it. If I fail to do what I am told, I get spanked. Yes, I initiated domestic discipline, but I don’t control it. I certainly don’t like being spanked. It’s painful. I get turned on by the idea of a spanking but get absolutely no sexual arousal out of the actual event. I’m always genuinely sorry I didn’t do as I was told when Mrs. Lion spanks me.
Speaking of the difference between teaching and training, was I taught to stay in position for a beating, or was I trained to do it? Either word seems to fit, but there is an important difference. I didn’t choose to learn to allow my bottom to be blistered. I had no choice. I was trained. A few years ago, Mrs. Lion did one of her “experiments” where she spanked me almost every night. The idea was for me to learn to stay in position for at least 300 swats. The training went on until I was able to do it, even when Mrs. Lion was making me yelp.
She wasn’t teaching me. She was training me. I didn’t learn as much as I was trained to stay. I had to do it and would suffer until I successfully stayed in position until she finished. I’m well trained now. I docilely get in position and stay until she tells me that I can get up.
I have mixed feelings about having to say that she “trained” me to do something. The implied submission is embarrassing. I wouldn’t want to tell people that I was spanked either. It feels fine to say that Mrs. Lion taught me something, but not that she trained me to do something. Come to think of it, I don’t remember her ever saying that she trained me to do something.