Learning how to learn
After listening to a podcast recently — an interesting conversation between Dave Pollard and Chris Corrigan — I am now even more convinced of the importance that we know HOW to learn. (To be honest I probably didn’t need all that much convincing!).
This skill will be so important in the future due to the exponential growth of information and the sheer volume of knowledge. We just don’t have the capacity to absorb it all.
It’s not particular knowledge you need, it’s just the ability to know how to learn. Because we’re not going to know what’s going to be needed in the future. You need to be able to learn and adapt to new environments and new knowledge.
This reminds me of the story about a university professor went to visit a famous Zen master. While the master quietly served tea, the professor talked about wanting to learn Zen. The master poured the visitor’s cup to the brim, and then kept pouring. The professor watched the overflowing cup until he could no longer restrain himself. “It’s overfill! No more will go in!” the professor blurted. “You are like this cup,” said the master.
The ability to be open — to first unlearn what we already know to allow us to accept new knowledge is perhaps the first step. What other competencies or skills are required to learn how to learn?
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Hello Darryl:
The capacity for reflection would be high on my list. I think an awareness of your preferred learning style helps a person to become an effective learner. I’m a visual learner. it works far better for me than tons of text, so I always go the visual route whenever I have a choice.
I think the practice of simply ‘attending to’ our experience might be a helpful place to start – bracketing our assumptions, describing our experience rather than explaining it, and giving every perception or sensation equal weight. None of these things are humanly possible to achieve completely or consistently in my view, but we can aspire to this practice.
Thanks for your comments Galba and Andrew, I concur. I was recently reading an article by Steve Handy, in which he used the term a “dose of intelligent naïveté”, as distinct from ‘an open mind’. Subtly different, but an important distinction I think.