Education And Ways Of Learning

Ways of Learning

There are many different ways of learning teaching is only one of them. We learn a great deal on our own, in independent study or play. We learn a great deal interacting with others informally sharing what we are learning with others and vice versa. We learn a great deal by doing, through trial and error. Long before there were schools as we know them, there was apprenticeship learning how to do something by trying it under the guidance of one who knows how. For example, one can learn more architecture by having to design and build one s own house than by taking any number of courses on the subject. When physicians are asked whether they leaned more in classes or during their internship, without exception they answer, Internship.

In the educational process, students should be offered a wide variety of ways to learn, among which they could choose or with which they could experiment. They do not have to learn different things the same way. They should learn at a very early stage of schooling that learning how to learn is largely their responsibility with the help they seek but that is not imposed on them.

The objective of education is learning, not teaching.

There are two ways that teaching is a powerful tool of learning. Let s abandon for the moment the loaded word teaching, which is unfortunately all too closely linked to the notion of talking at or lecturing, and use instead the rather awkward phrase explaining something to someone else who wants to find out about it. One aspect of explaining something is getting yourself up to snuff on whatever it is that you are trying to explain.

The second aspect of explaining something that leaves the explainer more enriched, and with a much deeper understanding of the subject, is this: To satisfy the person being addressed, to the point where that person can nod his head and say, Ah, yes, now I understand! explainers must not only get the matter to fit comfortably into their own worldview, into their own personal frame of reference for understanding the world around them, they also have to figure out how to link their frame of reference to the worldview of the person receiving the explanation, so that the explanation can make sense to that person, too. This involves an intense effort on the part of the explainer to get into the other person s mind, so to speak, and that exercise is at the heart of learning in general. For, by practicing repeatedly how to create links between my mind and another s, I am reaching the very core of the art of learning from the ambient culture. Without that skill, I can only learn from direct experience with that skill, I can learn from the experience of the whole world. Thus, whenever I struggle to explain something to someone else, and succeed in doing so, I am advancing my ability to learn from others, too.

Learning through Explanation

This aspect of learning through explanation has been overlooked by most commentators. And that is a shame, because both aspects of learning are what makes the age mixing that takes place in the world at large such a valuable educational tool. Younger kids are always seeking answers from older kids sometimes just slightly older kids (the seven-year old tapping the presumed life wisdom of the so-much-more-experienced nine year old), often much older kids. The older kids love it, and their abilities are exercised mightily in these interactions. They have to figure out what it is that they understand about the question being raised, and they have to figure out how to make their understanding comprehensible to the younger kids. The same process occurs over and over again in the world at large this is why it is so important to keep communities multi-aged, and why it is so destructive to learning, and to the development of culture in general, to segregate certain ages (children, old people) from others.

One might wonder how on earth learning came to be seen primarily a result of teaching. Until quite recently, the world s great teachers were understood to be people who had something fresh to say about something to people who were interested in hearing their message. Moses, Socrates, Aristotle, Jesus these were people who had original insights, and people came from far and wide to find out what those insights were. One can see most clearly in Plato s dialogues that people did not come to Socrates to learn philosophy, but rather to hear Socrates version of philosophy (and his wicked and witty attacks on other people s versions), just as they went to other philosophers to hear (and learn) their versions. In other words, teaching was understood as public exposure of an individual s perspective, which anyone could take or leave, depending on whether they cared about it. Education is a powerful tool in developing the student abilities and allowing the student to grow academically