Thursday, November 16, 2006

Stuck Learning #2

Following is a rebuttal to my recently writen Stuck Learning post. This was sent to me by a friend who I am sure will see my way in the end! :)
**********************

First off, how do you know that people aren’t learning anything in the opposite states of which you’ve presented?

1. Knows Everything Already – Some people know vast amounts, and really what those teachers/communicators have to offer, these people already know and understand it. So, over all, there stands the obligation of those people who are teaching to go further than their students. Some of those people, I would suggest are possible sick of what is known as satisfactory. What if someone has exhausted all of the resources that they know of, and sincerely can’t find anymore so they can proceed--- all the resources have been used by this person. Is there more to learn, and are they to create new resources out of thin air?

2. Busyness
– Sometimes you really do need to deal with what’s in the front of you before you can deal with anything new. So, you can’t always learn something new. Sometimes people just have to cope with and process what’s going on. If you take new things on all the time ‘in hopes to learn’, it can result in stress, and possibly, eventually burn out. I would suggest to encourage people to sometimes stop learning new things so they can digest what’s in front of them already.

3. Boredom – What are the teachers actually teaching? Are they teaching material that is intriguing, one that challenges or are they simply teaching what they know? Sometimes people have, again, exhausted all the resources, and as a result are bored. The onus is no longer on the learner, but the teacher.

4. Repetition – I think there’s something to be said for perfection. You have to practice it until you get it right. “Practice makes perfect.” Think of drumming for example. The drummers, who are really good, have perfected every step before they move on to the next/new one. This applies to more than just this one aspect of life but, I would suggest, in its varying forms, to every aspect. You have to master the placing the light bulb into the socket if you want to actually see the light turn on when you flip the switch.

5. Completed Living – Again going on the thought of the drummers training. You can’t move on until you’ve perfected what you have just been taught. Bringing a new aspect will completely throw you off. Some things in life require you to acknowledge that you have perfected something, and that you have completed it in order to move on and be successful. If you recognize that you are incomplete in something, haven’t mastered it, and move on anyway, you could be setting yourself up for future folly.

6. Crisis Free - I think ‘troublems’ is a wrong way to put it. What about learning through just simple observation? I wouldn’t say that you’re stuck if you aren’t experiencing crisis. Crisis can sometimes again, cause stress or, as an end result, burn out, and thus crisis as a positive, can be a dangerous ally.

7. Unnecessary Failure
– Aka, Ignorance. That’s another way to look at it. What if you don’t know that the knowledge is available? You have absolutely no knowledge of this higher level. Is the onus on you if you actually don’t know?

8. Isolation – What about the introverts? The ones that can’t learn with others. You look at college and high school years, where you have various students. Some of the students simply can’t learn from and while being around people. They need to be alone so they can process. Being in a room of people is distracting, causes dissention for them, and, therefore, disallows them from being able to process any information. Not everyone is the same, and not everyone learns the same way. To make a universal statement that shared space is a learning environment that works, seems rather presumptuous.

**************
Thanks Steve!
-Jer

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

I think it is important to always be learning. The most knowledgeable person knows so very little about 99% of what humanity knows.

I guess we can take learning too far by being too busy learning while forgetting to spend time with our neighbours and families.

I had a boss once that told me that anyone that looks at anything that is fictional or non-scientific is wasting their time by not learning. This person worked 7 days a week learning and developing new technology for his company, while his family suffered.

Unknown said...

So then where do you stand? Do you advocate for always learning? Or do you lean more towards not always learning and tending to other things?

Anonymous said...

IDK. Unless stuck in a hole in the ground or how can one not be learning something?

What and how much learning is best for everyone is too deep a topic for me.

Mabe getting stuck in a rut is the issue, not the amount of learning being lost.