Tech Trade-Off: III. Thinking Differently about Learning

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III. Thinking Differently about Learning

Learning, the singular thing, is generally considered an accumulation of acquired knowledge. We also call it ‘information’, ‘content’, even ‘skill’ – think ‘learning’ as something contained, the only thing left but to bottle and sell it.

Sometimes, you’ll also hear the insipid head-shaker “learnings,” with that plural ‘s’ tacked on the end, which I gather means “lessons” or “wisdom.” I’ve also heard “teachings” used the same way. By this usages, we’re back to a gerunds being the-verbs-that-is-a-nouns, where “students can share their learning(s)” as they might share a refreshing cases of Pepsi-Cola.

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As for being a misconstrued process, someone might attribute to learning a ‘start’ and a ‘finish’, as if sitting down to learn were like sitting down to dine. On the grammar front, I’d simply note how this conception of learning likens the noun to another verb form: the infinitive, i.e. to learn.

Altogether, such a singular concept of learning differs from my own concept of learning… a bit like how apprehension differs from comprehension, where the one is a sense that something is the case while the other is some fuller knowledge about whatever we’re sensing. As the one is more immediate and discrete, at my fingertips, the other transcends and perdures, by contemplation.

For me, learning means something continual, if not continuous – and maybe this is just idiosyncratic to English, somebody let me know. My own conception of learning suggests dynamism, neither the stuff getting bottled nor the bottles themselves, nor even the process of getting stuff into bottles; indeed, the image of filling learners’ minds is a big no-no in education, as is delivering a lesson the way Amazon delivers packages.

How about this… after delivering my daughter to piano lessons, I enjoy a coffee at Tim Horton’s while she and her teacher share 52 keys for sixty minutes. Later on, at home, I enjoy listening while my daughter practises apart from her teacher. During all that time, though, my daughter is learning, each situation helping comprise her whole underway experience of ‘learning piano’.

In her case, that process continued over several years, and I could even imagine it might have ‘begun’, as it were, well before she ever actually sat down next to her teacher – some earlier moment when she felt that inner stirring about even ‘getting to take’ piano lessons. By contrast, once she had begun, at no point did some single ‘part-of-the-whole’ cap off ‘all-that-it-was’. That occurring dynamic, that underway-ness – that process – that, for me, is the gerund of learning.

Image Credits: Taken on Pixabay (Edited)
and Clker-Free-Vector-Images on Pixabay

The gerund, please remember, is the verb-that-is-a-noun, e.g. “Learning takes time and patience.” Yet the gerund can also be part of a predicate verb construction: “I’m still learning to play golf.” This is why Martin Hall keeps devising new and inventive props and drills for practising your golf swing… although, granted, it’s a poor example for those who’ve mastered all 18 holes.

Apart from mastery, the only way I can see to curb any learning process would be some intentional notion to cease learning that particular thing, like when my daughter decided to lift no-longer-willing fingers from the keyboard. Not long after no longer apprehending 52 keys, her comprehension was finding new things to contemplate. Yet, since then, as she’s decided to play piano a little more now and again, so also has her ‘learning piano’ experience re-commenced, albeit in a less formal way.

How about this… a teacher in a classroom steps away from these students over here to visit those students over there. Unlike the piano example, where a student visits the piano teacher, a classroom teacher is the one who circulates, doing their part before stepping away to another table. Yet each time I step away from these students over here to visit those students over there, I must admit, I tend to think I’m simply closing Part I’s laundry door: sure enough, after I step away, the students over here are still chugging along, now learning in my absence, as they were earlier learning in my presence, as they were learning before I arrived.

And in a class of two or three dozen students, plus me – one teacher – I must admit that I depend on learning to be a continuous process. At my best, what I’m really doing is shepherding a process. At my worst, students are left shepherding themselves… which is totally fine if you just want to enjoy playing, but not necessarily if you want to be learning, piano.

How about this… the Solar System is a singular thing, but as a dynamic ‘system’ underway, it has many components, all moving by way of their inter-action: the Sun, each planet, all those moons, all the asteroids and comets, cosmic dust, and even people – everything with mass affecting everything else with mass, all relating continuously, endlessly, while revolving around shared centres of gravity. What better analogy for a classroom full of students and their teacher?

Now you see why teachers bargain for smaller class sizes…
Image Credit (edited): ZCH on Pexels

The misleading conception of learning as a singular event is as if to say, “This is Learning. He’s a gerund.” I just don’t think learning is like this. You can’t save Learning a seat, you can’t buy Learning a green fee, you can’t play Learning a nocturne, and Learning won’t be pouring you a cup of coffee tomorrow morning. Learning isn’t born to live and die because learning isn’t singular or quantifiable or determinate. More importantly, the singular notion of learning as a thing is not only misleading, it’s contrary to education and any possible meaning we might ascribe to ‘the learning process’. Yet how often does any utterance of the word denote this nuance?

Recap:

(a) In apprehending surplus time, I fear we’ve misconstrued the significance of committed time, and I think the resultant surplus mind-set owes at least some debt of thanks to our tendency for shorthanding. And I fear we’re mistaken to dismiss old-man grousing about the way things used to be. The time that has passed, where we’ve come from – going back generations, lifetimes, centuries ago – has left us readied to continue with a frame-of-mind for reduction and abstraction. Even while it’s something we’re learning, I fear it’s something we’ve learned.

(b) As a picture is worth a thousand words, so a word is worth a thousand details, and if words really do matter, so actions are apparently louder still, even when that action is underway up between our ears. As we think, so we do.

So, with a pedantic hat tip to Parts of Speech, let me suggest that we curb our shorthanding and take greater care for ourselves, by way of our thinking. Let’s curb the shorthand notion of learning as a finite event and start recalling learning – like thinking – as an underway process.

And, to be fair, if process can even approach anything like a singular thing, maybe let’s imagine it as time-lapse photography, or those Cracker Jack holograms, where you had to tip the cardboard back-and-forth to move the picture – like CGI, just way more interactive.

As for anyone still arrogant enough to say, “I’m doing the laundry” – go beat your clothes in the creek with a rock.