Learning to Learn

noreply@blogger.com (Ed) — Sun, 22 Apr 2012 05:32:00 +0000

I am more convinced than ever of the virtue, as well as the difficulty, of moving towards Learning to Learn.

I have recently moved to a senior housing program, and am in the company of many folks in their 70's, and 80's, just like me! They are charming and delightful, and seem very caring. But very solidly opinionated. They know. Scientists, they are not.

I am wondering if this rigidity and their very limited listening skills are a characteristic of this particular generation, or if diminishing communication and learning skills are a characteristic of aging? I surely hope the former, which would mean that as time goes on, we would all become better at interpersonal skills and at learning to learn.

Your thoughts?

Rewards

noreply@blogger.com (Ed) — Sun, 18 Mar 2012 02:53:00 +0000

Learning is its own reward. The process of learning is inherently exciting, rewarding. But we seem to get in the way of kids experiencing the fun of learning, the joy of discovery. Make the assumption that learning itself is motivational, and that your child loves to learn. (I’m speaking of learning now, not school. Two different things!) Then identify the ways that we make it demotivating, and eliminate them. And if we need to establish rewards, let’s make sure they are applied to the process, the problem solving skills, the “how” of learning, not just the product, the answer. I remember being really appreciative in a statistics course, when the professor gave substantial credit for the correct procedure, even if a mechanical mistake made the answer wrong. I don’t mean to say that it’s OK to have the wrong answer, but the answer is not the only useful outcome in learning.

The greatest reward for many children is the learning itself, reinforced by an honest appreciative compliment from a parent.

Grades - Bah, Humbug

noreply@blogger.com (Ed) — Fri, 17 Feb 2012 23:52:00 +0000

I’ve been convinced for years- as a student, as a parent of four kids, as an elementary school principal, and as a community college and university teacher - that grades are not only useless, but are often counterproductive. They interfere with real learning more than they help. But unfortunately they are a reality.

Listing problems caused by or associated with the grading system is not difficult: grades tend to push students toward competition rather than cooperation, and students begin to function as if the grade rather than the learning is the important outcome. The teacher's control in a hierarchical fashion is supported rather than heading toward a co-learning posture, and learning becomes more a matter of recall and rote. The assumption is fostered that all truth is known and the function of schooling is to transfer it to the mind of the student, rather than learning being a higher level process whereby new information and skills are gained by the student and applied in a useful setting. The very important function of the teacher in providing feedback for the student becomes simplified to the point of being ridiculous, with meaning being vested in one letter, an "A" or "B" or "C". Very clearly and simply, grading gets in the way of learning, especially if by “learning” we mean “learning to learn”. Kids don’t learn to think “outside the box”, nor to value discovery.

At least some of the problem with grading is because schools tend to grade the wrong things- strictly the content: accumulation of facts in math, reading, history, science. What if they forgot about that, and instead graded curiosity, skills in problem solving, asking good questions, ability to put things together, relating earlier learning to new, listening, being one’s own teacher, creativity and other skills of learning. Much better! And some schools are making headway in this direction.

Better yet, however, if rather than grading, which is pure evaluation, we learned to provide objective feedback to kids. Objective means non-evaluative information about our perceptions of the kid’s performance, leaving the child to do the “evaluating”, or adding to it “Gee, I did a good job with that”, or “I bet I could do better in the future if I....”. Ideas that are self appropriated are more meaningful than those that come from teachers or parents.

Here are a few thoughts about how parents can better deal with grades-

• Minimize the whole thing. It’s just not a big deal. Show some interest, but don’t let your child feel that the report card is what school is all about, or that grades are the extent of your concern and caring. There are many more important issues.

• Don ‘t reward or punish a child with respect to the report card or grades. Children are subject to behavioral psychology just as much as your pets are, but the more we use external rewards and punishments instead of reinforcing the native joy of learning for the sake of learning, the less effect we will have. Working for the reward, whether it’s a ten dollar bill or words of praise, tends to have the child learn for something extrinsic to himself rather than from the pleasure of learning.

• Try to substitute feedback for evaluation. Feedback is non-evaluative, not ending with “Therefore you were good”, or worse, “Therefore you were bad”. Leave that to the child. Useful feedback might start with words like “I am very proud of you when you...”; or “I noticed that when you ....., the result was....”. Make sure the feedback is something under the control of the child, something that he can deal with.

• Don’t be comparative, either comparing your child with another, or one reporting period with another, or with yourself at his age.

• Take every chance you get to support the teacher, so that the child is more connected with a sense of personal responsibility. I knew of a parent one time who was negative about the teacher to the extent that the child no longer sensed that learning was her own responsibility. She in effect was saying to herself, “My Daddy thinks that Miss Martin is not a very good teacher; no wonder I don’t do well.”

• Keep emphasizing that the important thing is to learn to be a seeker of learning, to be motivated, to be able to solve problems, to figure things out. “Wow, if you keep up like this, you’ll get to the point where you don’t need a teacher anymore!” (One definition of an educated person is one who no longer needs a teacher; not because he knows it all, but because he knows how to learn).

• Get the child involved in the reporting/grading process. You might ask “How would you have graded yourself if you had filled out the report card?” The purpose of a report card is ostensibly to report to the parents how the child is doing. How about the child reporting too? Frankly, I’d be more inclined to believe the child rather than the teacher if there were a discrepancy. One of the most functional classes I ever taught at a university level was one in which I had the students grade themselves. It freed them to concentrate on learning, rather than satisfying me. I gave up some control so that they could have more control. It worked. Overall, the grades were just a bit lower than what I would have given.

• In any parent-teacher conferences, make sure that the teacher knows that you are concerned about the child’s learning to learn processes, not only the accumulation of information as measured by a report card.

A Combination; What Do You Think?

noreply@blogger.com (Ed) — Sat, 04 Feb 2012 01:18:00 +0000

I’ve been doing some thinking, and could use some help.

During recent years, even decades, I have been intrigued by two major ideas. I have done lots of reading, some writing, and a lot of thinking about these concepts and their implications and applications.

The first is in the area of the Supernatural; I am absolutely astounded, even now, about how intelligent, well educated and sophisticated people can believe in the Supernatural. That is belief in the existence of anything without a reasonable degree of evidence. I find it amazing, and indeed unfortunate, that such an enormous amount of energy in our world goes to the ideas of supporting and promulgating the Supernatural. And by Supernatural, I mean not only witches, magic, hobgoblins and Angels, but also God. I have surely become an atheist, and find great satisfaction understanding that ideas such as God and heaven, are myths; illusions. I have been exploring the idea of the effects worldwide of belief in the Supernatural, which are socially catastrophic; wars, murder, violence, torture, and more. “My God is better than your God.” I feel an obligation to do something to soften the deleterious effects of Supernatural belief.

The second is the Learn to Learn idea, the subject of this blog. The importance of independent thinking, learning to be a bit skeptical and not simply accept values from an authority. Think of schooling as on a horizontal line. On one end, let’s put almost all of our traditional approach, the general idea that “I know, you don’t; I’m going to tell you. On the other end, however, put the idea of Learning How to Learn. My point is that schooling should move, at least a little bit, toward the Learn to Learn end. I’ll use a series of pairs of words to explain further. Education should be more democratic than autocratic, more collegial than hierarchical, more centered on how to think and feel than memory, more cooperative than competitive, more learning as a verb rather than as a noun, more the teacher as facilitator rather than the teacher as expert. The values, attitudes and skills associated with learning are not intuitive; but they can be learned and taught. (I recently wrote an article called “How to Help Your Child Become a Humanist” for the newsletter of the American Humanist Association. If you would like a copy, please e-mail me at edjohns@comcast.net)

My recent musings suggest that these two concepts, learn to learn and atheism can be put together. The major effect of learning to learn is to help kids become independent thinkers, and as such they will tend to be a bit skeptical of the authoritarian handing down of, among other things, beliefs and the relevance of faith, which means belief without the need for evidence,

What you think?

Words, words, words...

noreply@blogger.com (Ed) — Fri, 16 Dec 2011 22:05:00 +0000

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

noreply@blogger.com (Ed) — Tue, 13 Dec 2011 22:24:00 +0000

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

noreply@blogger.com (Ed) — Sat, 10 Dec 2011 18:00:00 +0000

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

noreply@blogger.com (Ed) — Sat, 03 Dec 2011 03:52:00 +0000

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-

noreply@blogger.com (Ed) — Sun, 20 Nov 2011 23:01:00 +0000

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???

noreply@blogger.com (Ed) — Wed, 16 Nov 2011 03:39:00 +0000

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?

"Now You See It..."

noreply@blogger.com (Ed) — Tue, 18 Oct 2011 21:42:00 +0000

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.

Parts of Speech!

noreply@blogger.com (Ed) — Sat, 01 Oct 2011 02:12:00 +0000

To make up for the last rather lengthly post, here is a really short one. I'll expand on it later.

Education today is mostly like a noun, not much like a verb. That should be reversed.

Science and Math as L2L

noreply@blogger.com (Ed) — Fri, 30 Sep 2011 19:51:00 +0000

I have a set of blocks , made in England some years ago, that I have used in workshops for elementary school teachers, to illustrate thinking patterns, and to help the teachers to develop curricula and methods to support logical thinking. The blocks are in five shapes, three colors, two sizes, and two thicknesses, making a total of 60 pieces. Many things can be done with them, but one I remember is to put all the blocks in a shoe box, covered, and shake them. Ask the children (or teachers, in this case) what they think is inside. When their guessing gets close, take one piece out for them, not letting them see the remaining ones. Now ask them to ask you for another piece. When they get close, give them another, still hiding the remaining ones. Then ask again. Each time, they will be able to ask a better question. For example, after the thick red circle and the thin blue triangle are out, someone could ask for a thick red triangle. Step at a time, they will learn the attributes of the blocks, and near the end be able to say, “I’d like a thin, small, yellow square”. This simple game includes some important parts of logical thinking; the use of set theory, concepts of sorting and relationships of order, equivalence and difference, and the whole idea of inference. Surely there are many other ways to teach mathematics as L2L, rather than the mere accumulation of facts and figures. I realize you can’t use the blocks game I described here, but if you have the right attitude, you’ll likely be able to turn many learning exercises for your child into an exercise in logic.

You’ll be able to think of many other ways to help your child with logic through mathematics. How about figuring mileage on a trip? Connecting the miles with the hours? Given one bit of information, like the price of one pizza, how do you figure out the price of three? Help your child learn to estimate, such as by counting the number of words in several lines of text, averaging, and multiplying by the approximate number of lines to get the total number of words. If you want to leave a 15% tip at a restaurant, have your child figure out how to get the approximate amount. But keep the point on the “how” more than the “what.”

Surely a parent’s role in relation to science can be in the learning to learn part. Science is a set of skills more than a collection of previously known data. Science is much more than nature study. How about helping your middle school child who is studying biology learn how to BE a biologist rather than just learning biological facts? If you were a biologist, how would you think, observe, organize data? How would you discover new information about plants and animals? What are the tools of the biologist, not only microscopes and taxonomic tables, but what are the thinking patterns a biologist uses? How does a biologist establish an hypothesis? Test it? Draw conclusions? “The Scientific Method” is often a unit in a college science course, but in an appropriate form might well be learned by small children, within the process of leading kids to the excitement of discovery.

Both mathematics and science as a process are wonderfully supported by materials used in Montessori schools. Most teaching supply stores have excellent kits and other materials to help with learning to learn through science and math.

A sixth grade unit in science on which I worked some years ago centered on cultural anthropology. The topic of aggression was included. The sixth graders, using anthropologist’s field notebooks, went behind ‘blinds” set up in the kindergarten, and observed the kindergarten children for instances of aggression and recorded their impressions. Back in their classroom, the teacher led a discussion about aggression. In effect, the sixth graders became cultural anthropologists rather that merely learning already known facts about aggression. And they loved it!

Asking Questions

noreply@blogger.com (Ed) — Sun, 18 Sep 2011 01:54:00 +0000

The one best path to learning is undoubtedly asking questions. There is an art to asking useful questions. Your child can ask questions of adults, or maybe even more important, of other kids. Get into a dialogue with your child about what he/she is learning, and how he/she is going about it. Let your child be your teacher about things the child knows about. Don’t be ashamed of not knowing. Just be sure to ask the child about the information he/she has, and genuinely learn from it. We often learn the most when we teach someone else, so put away your ego and illustrate your interest in learning by asking genuine questions of the child, and letting the child teach you. And understand, I’m not talking about asking questions as a test, to see if the child knows something. Be proud of being curious, of not knowing, but being interested in finding out. Modeling your own curiosity and skill of asking for information will be one of the most important processes of learning that you can convey.

New Goals?

noreply@blogger.com (Ed) — Sun, 04 Sep 2011 23:50:00 +0000

There is a very interesting article in this morning’s New York Times (September 3, 2011). The title is “In Classroom of the Future, Stagnant Scores”. The major emphasis is that in high-tech classrooms- lots of laptops, interactive screens and software - student test scores are not going up.

The tests, however, are measuring the goals of the present, or even the past, like kids becoming learnED. Not the goal of the future, the goal of becoming a learnER. So indeed the test scores are not improving, since they don’t measure the more relevant goals.

But with changes in the goals to measure learning skills, like creativity and problem solving, that disconnect would diminish. Hi-tech approaches have a powerful Learn to Learn component. With a small change in the classroom, accompanying the increase in high-tech approaches and toward a learn to learn approach, and changes in the goals toward helping kids to become learnERS rather than merely learnED, we might find some dramatic differences, both individually and socially.

We can no longer continue to measure new goals with old instruments.

If you don’t get the Times and would like to read the article, I’ll be glad to forward it.

Ed Johnson edjohns@comcast.net

Genuine Questions

noreply@blogger.com (Ed) — Wed, 31 Aug 2011 19:19:00 +0000

The one best path to learning is undoubtedly asking questions. There is an art to asking useful questions, too. Your child can ask questions of adults, or maybe even more important, of other kids. Get into a dialog with your child about what he/she is learning, and how he/she is going about it. Let your child be your teacher about things the child knows about. Don’t fake not knowing, just be sure to ask the child about the information he/she has, and genuinely learn from it. We often learn the most when we teach someone else, so put away your ego or your need to be all-knowing, and illustrate your interest in learning by asking genuine questions of your child. And understand, I’m not talking about asking questions in the way of a test, to see if the child knows. Ask because you want to learn about it. Be proud of being curious, of not knowing, but being interested in finding out. Modeling your own curiosity and skill in asking for information will be one of the most important processes of learning that you can convey.

You can even learn to model asking questions of your and your child’s material: books, or the equipment they use in a lab course. Encourage your child to be persistent, not easily satisfied with pat answers, or responses such as “Well, that’s just the way it is!” It’s your child’s learning we’re talking about, and it’s important.

Finland is a Winner!

noreply@blogger.com (Ed) — Fri, 26 Aug 2011 17:51:00 +0000

I just got a call from very close friend in Florida who knows of my strong interest in the Learn to Learn concept. She had just looked through her September issue of the Smithsonian Magazine and called me to tell me of a fascinating article. It describes education in Finland. I was aware that education in Finland has been rated among the tops on the planet, but never sure why. This article points out interesting things that Finland is doing, one of which - HOORAY!! - is helping kids learn how to learn!

Should you choose to read it, here is the URL to get to it.

http://www.smithsonianmag.com/people-places/Why-Are-Finlands-Schools-Successful.html

After you read it, please post your reaction.

A Simple Learn to Learn Idea-

noreply@blogger.com (Ed) — Fri, 26 Aug 2011 17:47:00 +0000

Here is a really simple example of the Learn to Learn approach for a parent.

When your 3rd grader comes home from school, you normally say something like “Hi Hon - what did you learn in school today?” She will probably respond about something interesting to her, or perhaps some mathematics or language skills.

Instead of dropping it at that, how about adding the question “Goodness, That’s Interesting! (If You Are Being Honest!) HOW did you learn that? Again, it might be a brief and not very meaningful answer such as “ Mrs. Jordan told us”. Accurate, and fair enough. But it’s a start on the way to her thinking about the process of learning. It could even be followed by something like “You must be a pretty good listener in order to have learned that”.

The Question-Driven Life

noreply@blogger.com (Ed) — Sun, 21 Aug 2011 20:43:00 +0000

The following is a recent column by David Brooks. He describes some members of the Leakey family, who are classic examples of a Learn To Learn, process approach to their lives.

The Question-Driven Life

By DAVID BROOKS

Rift Valley, Kenya

We are born with what some psychologists call an “explanatory drive.” You give a baby a strange object or something that doesn’t make sense and she will become instantly absorbed; using all her abilities — taste, smell, force — to figure out how it fits in with the world.
I recently met someone who, though in his seventh decade, still seems to be gripped by this sort of compulsive curiosity. His name is Philip Leakey.
He is the third son of the famed paleoanthropologists Louis and Mary Leakey and the brother of the equally renowned scholar, Richard Leakey. Philip was raised by people whose lives were driven by questions. Parts of his childhood were organized around expeditions to places like Olduvai Gorge where Louis and most especially Mary searched for bones, footprints and artifacts of early man. The Leakeys also tend to have large personalities. Strains of adventurousness, contentiousness, impulsivity and romance run through the family, producing spellbinding people who are sometimes hard to deal with.
Philip was also reared in the Kenyan bush. There are certain people whose lives are permanently shaped by their frontier childhoods. They grew up out in nature, adventuring alone for long stretches, befriending strange animals and snakes, studying bugs and rock formations, learning to fend for themselves. (The Leakeys are the sort of people who, when their car breaks down in the middle of nowhere, manage to fix the engine with the innards of a cow.)
This sort of childhood seems to have imprinted Philip with a certain definition of happiness — out there in the bush, lost in some experiment. Naturally, he wasn’t going to fit in at boarding school.
At 16, he decided to drop out and made a deal with his parents. He would fend for himself if they would hire a tutor to teach him Swahili. Kenya has 42 native tribes, and over the next years Phillip moved in with several. He started a series of small businesses — mining, safari, fertilizer manufacturing and so on. As one Kenyan told me, it’s quicker to list the jobs he didn’t hold than the ones he did.
The Leakey family has been prolifically chronicled, and in some of the memoirs Philip comes off as something of a black sheep, who could never focus on one thing. But he became the first white Kenyan to win election to Parliament after independence, serving there for 15 years.
I met him at the remote mountain camp where he now lives, a bumpy 4-hour ride south of Nairobi near the Rift Valley. Leakey and his wife Katy — an artist who baby-sat for Jane Goodall and led a cultural expedition up the Amazon — have created an enterprise called the Leakey Collection, which employs up to 1,200 of the local Maasai, and sells designer jewelry and household items around the world.
The Leakeys live in a mountaintop tent. Their kitchen and dining room is a lean-to with endless views across the valley. The workers sit out under the trees gossiping and making jewelry. Getting a tour of the facilities is like walking through “Swiss Family Robinson” or “Dr. Dolittle.”
Philip has experiments running up and down the mountainside. He’s trying to build an irrigation system that doubles as a tilapia farm. He’s trying to graft fruit trees onto native trees so they can survive in rocky soil. He’s completing a pit to turn cow manure into electricity and plans to build a micro-hyrdroelectric generator in a local stream.
Leakey and his workers devise and build their own lathes and saws, tough enough to carve into the hard acacia wood. They’re inventing their own dyes for the Leakey Collection’s Zulugrass jewelry, planning to use Marula trees to make body lotion, designing cement beehives to foil the honey badgers. They have also started a midwife training program and a women’s health initiative.
Philip guides you like an eager kid at his own personal science fair, pausing to scratch into the earth where Iron Age settlers once built a forge. He says that about one in seven of his experiments pans out, noting there is no such thing as a free education.
Some people center their lives around money or status or community or service to God, but this seems to be a learning-centered life, where little bits of practical knowledge are the daily currency, where the main vocation is to be preoccupied with some exciting little project or maybe a dozen.
Some people specialize, and certainly the modern economy encourages that. But there are still people, even if only out in the African wilderness, with a wandering curiosity, alighting on every interesting part of their environment.
The late Richard Holbrooke used to give the essential piece of advice for a question-driven life: Know something about something. Don’t just present your wonderful self to the world. Constantly amass knowledge and offer it around.

An Educational Consulting Service-

noreply@blogger.com (Ed) — Sun, 21 Aug 2011 02:24:00 +0000

I recently had a fascinating meeting with Kevin Corner, who is the director of a newly established educational consulting service here in Tucson. I was intrigued because Kevin’s basic philosophy of education comes very close to the learn to learn idea. The business is called “2 What End”. You can find their website at www.2WhatEnd.com The subtitle on his business card reads “Pathmakers- Navigating the journey from present reality to future necessity.”

They produce a newsletter called “Expedition Journal”, and I’m sure he would be happy to include you on the mailing list. The journal’s sub-title is “Designing, Developing and Delivering High Quality Professional Learning for 21st Century Thinking”. The issue that Kevin gave me includes a very laudatory review of the book “Out of Our Minds: Learning to Be Creative”, by Ken Robinson. I have ordered it, and will report to you after I have a chance to read it.

Learning to Learn is Preparation for the Future

noreply@blogger.com (Ed) — Sat, 13 Aug 2011 21:21:00 +0000

I just read an interesting article/book review in the New York Times. (August 7, 2011). The title is “Education Needs a Digital Age Upgrade”. Schools are not keeping up with the technology at the workplace; high school and college graduates do not have up to date technical skills. Although the article does promote the teaching of digital skills, still, the book written by Cathy Davidson, of the MacArthur foundation, “Now You See It” , describes a “Learn to Learn” solution to a major problem. The problem?

“… fully 65% of today’s grade school kids may end up doing work that hasn’t been invented yet.”

Simply keeping the curriculum up-to-date is obviously not enough. Kids have to be empowered to do their own learning after they graduate from school.

As Ms. Davidson puts it: “Pundits may be asking if the Internet is bad for our children’s mental development, but the better question is whether the form of learning and knowledge–making we are instilling in our children is useful to their future”.

Sounds right-on to me. I have ordered her book, and will tell you more after I have read it.

An Initial Post

noreply@blogger.com (Ed) — Fri, 12 Aug 2011 20:47:00 +0000

Good Morning-

I hope you don't get the impression that I propose that all of schooling should be focused on learning to learn. For that matter, really competent and sensitive teachers and parents are already doing at least something in the learn to learn dimension. My estimate is that perhaps 10% of the time in regular school classrooms, and a bit less in the parent–child relationship, is devoted to the idea of learning how to learn. All the rest is learning the concept, the curriculum, the “stuff". The following is a portion of a letter which I wrote to an educational journal. Alas, it was not published!

My suggestion is that we gradually shift the 90/10 division to 80/20, perhaps to 70/30; Increasing our emphasis on the skills of learning; helping kids, and indeed all of us, learn how to learn.

Just a few of the advantages of heading in this direction–

–Kids will obviously be better prepared as they leave school and enter our dramatically changing world. They will have the learning skills required to be functional with new information.

–Learning to learn is fun, even exciting. When kids learn problem-solving techniques and how to apply them to their own situation, they become self-motivated.

– Helping kids learn how to learn is a very reasonable way for parents to be involved with their kids, providing a model, and avoiding the problems of parents helping with history or algebra.

– The idea of learning to learn transcends existing educational policy differences. Even those on the far right or the far left end of the political spectrum can agree that learning to learn is a functional direction to go.

Your thoughts would be appreciated

Welcome to the Learning to Learn Blog !

noreply@blogger.com (Ed) — Mon, 01 Aug 2011 02:21:00 +0000

Welcome to a website/blog concerned with a very important educational issue!

It centers on the idea of helping kids–and all of us–to learn not only the content or the curriculum, but also to learn the techniques and processes of learning itself. There are several Pages in headings to the right which will give you some basic information. Once you are familiar with the idea I would love to have your thoughts and comments about it. Does it make sense to you? Do you have any questions? Do you have any thoughts about how to implement learning to learn?

I'll try to add a new post with some specifics about the concept every week or so, in addition to responding to your questions and ideas. So let's get a conversation going about what could well be a very major change in the general approach to education. If it works anywhere near as well as I think it can, the world will be a better place as a result.

Ed Johnson

edjohns@comcast.net