Words, words, words...

In trying to explain what I mean by Learn to Learn, I have used the following. Think of each pair as a spectrum, from one end to the other. The left column represents the traditional, rather autocratic setting, where the teacher is the expert who transmits information to the student. The right column represents the more involving pattern, with the teacher-student relationship closer to equivalent. Please realize these words are at the ends of each spectra; undoubtedly the most appropriate spot is somewhere in-between.

Those of us who are teachers or parents might take look at each spectrum, determine where we fall in our parental or teaching role, then ask ourselves if any adjustments are in order which could lead to a more Learn to Learn setting.

Autocratic	Democratic
Learn the content	Learn to learn
TAE; Deductive	EAT; Inductive
Comfortable with the supernatural	Very suspicious of the supernatural
I know, you don’t; I’m going to tell you”-	“Let’s learn together…”
Hierarchical	Collegial
Teacher as expert	Teacher as facilitator
Teacher as leader; boss	Teacher as colleague, partner
Convinced	Skeptical
Learn about the sciences	Learn to be a scientist
Learning stops at the present	Learning transcends the present
Naive, ingenuous, unsophisticated	Worldly, artful, sophisticated
A sponge for learning	A discriminating learner
Learning as a noun	Learning as a verb
Compliant	Rebellious
Leader or follower	Team member
Competitive	Cooperative
Student as follower, underling	Student as associate, co-worker
Learning centered on memory	Learning centered on thinking skills
Learning leads to orthodoxy	Learning leads to change

A Rationale for Learning to Learn

The following is adapted from my booklet about Learn to Learn, "Fifty Nifty Ways to Help Your Child Become a Better Learner". Should you like to have a copy, please send me your name and US mail address and I'll send you one. Or, it is available as a e-book on Amazon. My e-mail address is edjohns@comcast.net

We are in the midst of the Information Age. The world is changing at a dizzying pace. Consider these issues:

• If an engineer or physician finished medical school or engineering school ten years ago, and has not substantially updated his skills, he is simply out of date. A competent physician needs to know how to learn from his experiences, how to analyze those experiences, and turn them into useful generalizations or theoretical inferences.

• I idly asked my pharmacist a few days ago what percentage of the medications on the racks behind her were not available ten years ago. She thought for a minute, and estimated 80%.

• Some pundit said that the amount of information available to humankind at the time of the birth of Christ doubled by the year 1750. Sounds reasonable to me. It doubled again by 1900, that time taking 150 years to do what previously took 1750 years. Again, this seems sensible. Then another doubling to 1950, again by 1960.... and now, knowledge is doubling about every five years. Doubling!

• Wireless communication, computers...the entire digital world, is changing so fast no one can hope to keep up.

• Our grandparents, maybe even our parents were able to live a lifetime on the information they got in school from the then adequate information transfer system of learning. You and I cannot, and our children certainly can not even approach it. We have to learn from experiences as we go along.

• When content is presented exclusively as a body of knowledge to be transferred, learners can justifiably conclude that meaning comes from outside themselves. Not true. Real meaning comes from within.

• Learning the processes of learning is exciting, and supports additional curiosity rather than merely treating the learner as a passive recipient. We are dealing with “living” wisdom, or understanding, rather than only dead knowledge.

• Learning to learn is dynamic. It carries the seeds of its own transformation.

• Simple knowledge can be transferred from teacher to student, but wisdom and understanding result only when the learner “processes” the knowledge. The learn to learn teacher or parent supports the student in translating knowledge into understanding.

• Tom Friedman, a columnist for the New York Times, describes the schooling of Islamic boys and young men in the Middle East. Taught exclusively by clerics, the teaching style is a classic of learning by transmission only. We call it indoctrination. When they attempt higher education and a professor asks them to think about an issue they have no way to do it. They have never before been asked to think or feel, to solve problems, only to accept what they are told. They therefore revert to even deeper fundamentalism. Would a dictator like a learn to learn approach? Not at all. He wants and needs his subjects to be indoctrinated, not to think for themselves. Learn to learn can be considered education for democracy. 

Learning Outside of School

I remember a good experience when I was a Boy Scout, many years ago. We constructed our own transit, using a piece of plywood and a compass, and made a map of our neighborhood. It was fun, I learned about scale and distance, about geometry and geography, and how to read a map, but mostly I learned how to figure things out for myself. There was a lot of involvement on the part of the leader, but it was really an orchestration of the resources, like help in building the transit, suggestions about how to pace off distances, how to ask questions of him and the materials. I learned how to discover the answers rather than expecting the answers from the Scoutmaster.

Be sure that your support of the process of learning is not limited to school work. Most of our learning, especially at an early age, occurs outside of school.

Examples abound - nature walks are opportunities for discovery, there is much to learn from caring for a pet; camping trips and other family outings provide many learning to learn experiences.

Model Learning Yourself

Being an adult model of an eager, acquisitive learner is among the most important things we can do as parents. Demonstrate your own curiosity; show that you enjoy discovering new things. Ask questions more than demonstrating that you already know something. And real questions, not just “tests”, where you already know the answer. When visiting the zoo, for example, you might say “I wonder what Coyotes eat when they can’t find mice to catch?” rather than something “lecturey,” like “Coyotes eat mice, which keeps down the population of mice.” I have also found that being a bit tentative is useful. It allows the child to feel respected and to be the parent’s colleague instead of subordinate when the parent says “My experience is...; what is yours?” rather than the often cocksure pronouncement.

Be sure to be honest; don’t try to fake enthusiasm, don’t be “learned.” Be curious; not teacher as much as co-learner. Try not to ask fake questions, only real, when you really don’t know. Admit that it might be difficult for you. Be a colleague. Show how you figure things out. Look for alternatives. Wonderful conversations with a child begin with the parent saying, genuinely, “What do you think about ...,”  and then being respectful of the answer.

The Parents' Role-

The following is a brief piece about the role of parents in a child's learning. It is taken from my booklet, "Fifty Nifty Ways to Help Your  Child Become a Better Learner". Again, your comments about the post would be most appreciated.

The role of today’s parents with respect to their offspring’s learning is inordinately complex, much more so than in the past. Parents desperately want their kids to be successful, yet find themselves in an ancillary role, subservient to the curriculum centered program at school; outside, looking in. They try hard to motivate and encourage their kids, but still feel as if they are outsiders following the lead of the schools and the teachers. They find themselves in a complex combination of roles; partly teacher, or more likely teacher aide, partly friend and colleague, but partly boss, partly role model. 

Single parents have it even tougher! Many working moms come home after a long day at work and find it especially difficult to be supportive of the kids. They need some support themselves!

Parents therefore too easily fall into the role of the one who offers rewards and punishment, the disciplinarian, a behaviorist. They  want to avoid at all costs interfering with the curriculum, but to offer appropriate emotional support for their offspring. There are no guidelines. How can we help our children most appropriately, with the right combination of push and pull, the right connection to the school, the right balance between authority and colleague? How to do it well? 

Being the coach in a Learn to Learn framework can be an excellent solution to the question of how parents can best support the school and help their children to come as close as possible to attaining their potential. You care about your kids and their future, you want them to do well in school and in life, so accept the role of helping them learn how to learn. It won’t interfere with the school curriculum or the teacher’s role, and will actually support both. It will help your child to see you as friend and colleague rather than one more authoritarian boss in their lives, and therefore be genuinely motivational.  And besides, it’s fun!!!

New Goals???

In the books and articles that I have been reading lately about education and educational reform, I have come to realize that we have a substantial problem. Our traditional goals of education–high scores on the SATs, a wealth of knowledge about the facts and figures of history, the ability to remember and utilize rather complex mathematical problems, skill in the use of language, and many many more - are perfectly normal, entirely useful, and very important.

But  when we generate exciting new approaches to education  including highly experiential teaching methods, the new techniques don’t seem to make sense in terms of the old goals.  The use of participatory methods of teaching  are meant to accomplish much more than higher SAT scores. We need some new goals in order to encompass  and justify some of the exciting new approaches we are developing.

The new goals should be more in the direction of processes than products,  more about how to think rather than simply  the indoctrination of what to think; the outcome of kids who are  not only learned,  but also eager, motivated, and skillful learners.

And until we can come up with more appropriate new goals – goals in the arena of learning to learn – the old goals and the old measurement criteria like SAT tests will simply not do.

Any thoughts about what the new, process oriented goals should be like?

Ed

"Now You See It..."

I have just finished a remarkable book by Cathy Davidson titled “Now You See It -  How the Science of Attention Will Transform the Way We Live, Work, And Learn”. She is  Dean of Interdisciplinary Studies at Duke University, and  the person responsible for a program that provides a new iPod to every entering Duke freshman.

You probably remember the story of some psychologists who were interested in the idea of attention, especially as it relates to multitasking. They put together a group of people in a room, gave them several basketballs and asked them to throw the basketballs to each other. They videotaped the session, and then showed the tape to groups of people, asking them to count the number of exchanges of the basketball. When they  asked how many exchanges, people said something like “I saw 12”,  or “I saw 14”,  and the like. Then they asked the observers “Did you see the gorilla?”. Most people, about 85%, were puzzled, and said “What gorilla?”

The researchers had asked a woman to dress as a gorilla and walk through the room when the basketball throwing was going on. The gorilla walked from one side of the room to the middle, turned and faced the camera and waved, then continued across the screen and exited. Only 15% of the observers of the video even saw the gorilla!

Dr. Davidson, the author, centers her book about attention and focusing on this remarkable piece of research. I am mentioning it here because so much of it concerns the interface of the traditional world with the digital era.  In many ways, the book is a powerful support for the idea of learning how to learn. How do we design education for a world in which attention and distraction is becoming such a major force, and in which the idea of multitasking is becoming more and more  important? If everyone could read this prescient book, especially chapter 12, “The Changing Workplace”, our world would more quickly become a better place to live. 

Ed