Learning is Not Something That's Done to Us
“You cannot teach a person anything; you can only help him find it within himself.” ~Galileo
My book Challenging Assumptions in Education: From Institutionalized Education to a Learning Society was published back in 2000. It's now a bit dated in some places and out of print, although available as a free download. What follows is an excerpt.
Perhaps the most basic assumption our society makes about education is that learning can and should be produced in people. This assumption leads to another one: Learning is the result of treatment by an institution called school.
We assume that children do not want to learn and will not learn if left to their own devices. Instead, they will “fool around” (which is actually a great way to learn!). So we force children to gather together in one place for long hours with others of the same age, so that we can “educate” them. Even many people who reject traditional schooling in favour of homeschooling believe that education must be “done to” children. So they continue, at home, the process of manipulating children to learn, as well as judging, testing, and processing them in a variety of ways, then diagnosing them as having a problem or even an illness if they don’t learn what the adults have decided they need to learn. They do that because, like most of us, they have been schooled to believe this assumption (although some of those procedures are required of home educators by school authorities).
Admittedly, people do learn some things in schools. However, they are not the only – or for many people the best – environment for learning. And that is because they focus on teaching rather than on learning, on forcing a preconceived agenda rather than on supporting learners' needs.
Human beings do not need to be taught in order to learn, especially if we have not sought out that teaching. We are born interacting with and exploring our surroundings. Babies are active learners, their burning curiosity motivating them to learn how the world works. And if they are given a safe and supportive environment, they will continue to learn hungrily and naturally – in the manner and at the speed that suits them best.
In fact, you cannot stop children (or adults, for that matter!) learning from everything they experience – unless that instinct has been destroyed in them. Children are always experimenting with cause and effect. And they are always soaking up information from their environment – learning to walk, talk, and do many other amazing things.
Cognitive psychologist Alison Gopnik, who is co-author of a research study called The Scientist in the Crib, says babies’ brains are smarter, faster, more flexible and busier than adults’. Her research has confirmed that, contrary to traditional beliefs about children, toddlers think in a logical manner, arriving at abstract principles early and quickly. “They think, draw conclusions, make predictions, look for explanations and even do experiments,” she writes.
The late Robert White, Harvard developmental psychologist, called this instinct to learn an “urge toward competence.” What he meant was that we are born with the need to have an impact on our surroundings, to control the world in which we live. We do not just sit and wait for the world to come to us (unless we’ve been told to sit down, be quiet, and wait). We actively try to interpret the world, to make sense of it. Of course, this drive to discover means we are constantly learning -- and experiencing the satisfaction that comes with having learned.
Some psychologists feel that the pleasure we take from this drive to learn is also its motivation. Perhaps this hedonistic aspect of self-directed learning is also its downfall! How can something so important be so much fun? Can learning really be so effortless? Unfortunately, by turning learning into forced drudgery – intentionally or not – schools suffocate the natural desire and enthusiasm to discover and master the world.
What results is a kind of self-fulfilling prophesy. Because schools suffocate this hunger to learn, learning appears to be difficult and we assume that children must be extrinsically motivated to do it. The tools of manipulation and motivation include rewards and a whole array of often demeaningly “fun” exercises reproduced from boring workbooks, as well as punishment for rebellion against that agenda.
Nevertheless, there is more to learning than meets the eye. It is actually a very sophisticated mental process. No matter what the topic is or how motivated we are, people of all ages learn best when there is time for research, for digression, for processing the information, for immersion in the project, for spontaneous activities or even sidetracks. We learn by muddling through problems and discovering the satisfaction of accomplishment.
Learning is a process of figuring things out, making connections, getting ideas and testing them, taking risks, making mistakes without fear of ridicule or embarrassment, and trying again. An optimum learning environment provides opportunities and support for exploration and investigation of learner-directed questions and ideas.
Schools are not usually designed for this sort of active learning. They can’t possibly present enough opportunities, time, space, or flexibility for self-directed learning to take place, in spite of the fact that some teachers and administrators will tell you this is exactly what they are doing.
Active learners can benefit from access to resource people but do not require motivation or coercion. Active learners do not need the forced guidance of another person’s agenda or curriculum. They do not need formal lessons taught at predetermined hours on days set aside especially for learning. (They may chose formal lessons at some point, but that is their active choice.)
Nor does active learning require assessment or grading. The concepts of “passing” and “failing” are really only relevant to situations where education is thought of as a series of hurdles to be scaled, and where accountability is the bottom line from an economic efficiency perspective. Nobody needs tests or grades in order to learn. When we interfere with and try to control or measure the natural learning process, we remove children’s pleasure in discovery and inhibit their fearless approach to problem-solving.
Although the institution of schooling may not be the best place for many children to learn, it has other important functions. Requiring children to meet together in dedicated buildings for a certain number of hours each weekday serves parents who need child care, teachers who like to work regular hours at challenging jobs, and everyone else in the industry that services the institution. But it is time to admit to ourselves that the industrial model on which we have based our school systems is not designed for the benefit of learners. Children have become the justification for and the product of the school industry. In that way, schools need children more than children need schools!
Once we have challenged the assumption that real education can be done to people, we must do something new. And in future essays, I'll explore some ideas for accomplishing that.