What are you actively learning these days? How do you look back on/see your formal and informal educations? What do you now most wish you knew at some past seminal time?
What do you study? What do you teach? In which domains do you do both, and what is the balance?
Who teaches you? What do you appreciate about them?
How do I do education well already?
–I suck up learning from almost all possible sources. Lately I revel in what I learn from my kids–pop culture, history omg (their formal humanities education is so much broader and and deeper than mine was), fashion, sailing, ballet, music, relationships. I am a student of life; my major is relationships. My cumulative GPA is strong.
–I study teaching, of trainees, patients, kids, audiences, etc. I make an effort to understand learner’s points of reference, readiness, and goals. I try to meet them there, and help them get where they want to go. I can modify my posture, language, and directiveness or collaborativeness based on needs and dynamics.
–I am open to what I don’t know I don’t know. I am extremely teachable.
How could I do it better?
–I realized years ago that it’s not the remedial student who bothers me. It’s the disengaged one. If a learner is earnestly trying, I will go out of my way to help–stay late, think of different methods, stick with them. But if they don’t want to be there, then I don’t want them there, either. The change in me is dramatic, and it doesn’t serve anyone. So these days, my goal is to be honest about my attitude, call out honesty from learners, and make agreements on how we will hold ourselves and one another accountable for a more optimal relationship. Come to think of it, I could apply this to any relationship, yes?
–I could be more critical, especially of things I read online. If I trust you, I will believe what you tell me, especially if I see you as an authority figure. Thankfully I am often surrounded by realists, cynics, and skeptics, who lead me by their critical example.
How does society to education well already?
Identification and accommodation. Much more now than when I grew up, formal education entities recognize and accommodate the diversity of learning styles and needs. Processes and systems are now in place for nonconventional instruction, schedules, etc.
How could we do better?
Value education of all kinds. I always loved the show Dirty Jobs, hosted by Mike Rowe. It taught us about jobs that keep our world functioning, that we never knew about, and that do not involve four year degrees. No matter how much we evolve toward a knowledge and gig economy, we will always need people to grow and process our food, maintain our machines, build our spaces, etc. As AI and machines integrate into all of our systems, formal and continuing education will need to innovate and keep up, and much of it will still not require university credentials.
Remove financial barriers. For the work that does require collegiate creds, and for the sake of liberal arts learning itself, we have to stop putting people into lifelong debt to pursue scholarly goals. It may not be my place to opine on specifics, and I still have the right to call out the irrational and unjustifiable cost of higher education.
Life skills. Reading, writing, and ‘rithmetic are fundamental skills, yes. So are kindness, curiosity, manners, and effective communication. These days it seems at all levels of education, people need to re/learn how to simply be with other people without getting into fights. Maybe we should make All I Really Need to Know I Learned In Kindergarten required reading every year through post graduate training?
My point in this post, I realize here at the end, is about intellectual humility:
“People who are intellectually humble know that their beliefs, opinions, and viewpoints are fallible because they realize that the evidence on which their beliefs are based could be limited or flawed or that they may not have the expertise or ability to understand and evaluate the evidence. Intellectual humility involves understanding that we can’t fully trust our beliefs and opinions because we might be relying on faulty or incomplete information or are incapable of understanding the details.” For a more academic explanation, see this article from Nature, which I reference here for my own benefit:
“Research on intellectual humility offers an intriguing avenue to safeguard against human errors and biases. Although it cannot eliminate them entirely, recognizing the limitations of knowledge might help to buffer people from some of their more authoritarian, dogmatic, and biased proclivities.”
The more broadly and humbly we approach education of all kinds, both formal and informal, the better we can all learn how to think, which is exponentially more valuable than learning what to think, since information and knowledge now accelerates and changes many times over in a human lifetime. An attitude of lifelong learning and growth prepares us all to be more flexible, agile, and adaptive to the uncertain and volatile world we have created for ourselves.
Learn how best to learn, keep learning and applying, and be better for it all.
Healing Through Connection 