When younger people talk about school I often hear them say things like "why should I learn that ? I will never again need to know this or use it." It is hard to refuse the pragmatic perspective hidden in those words. Right! Why should we learn things we will never again use? One response, of course, would be that we never can be sure, if we don't need to use something again. This is the clutterer's, the hoarder's response to throwing things out. Never throw things out because you can never be sure, if you might not find a good use for it again. So, in their ears school and teachers seem to be saying "go ahead, clutter your mind with useless junk . . . you may need it some day." It reminds me of a friend telling me she took German in high-school. But the only thing she remembered from that class is the title of a story they were supposed to read--Eine Peruecke am Strand (A Wig on the Beach)--Come again!! Her German class did not turn her on to life-guarding on a beach, nor to being a hair-dresser of wig-maker. It didn't even turn her on to a life on the beach (searching for wigs!). In other words, the "just-in-case response to that youthful pragmatism is highly unsatisfying and, likely, not very convincing to anyone, especially not to a young person.
Yet, I am convinced that we're deeply wrong to connect learning with an end-product. It doesn't matter whether that end-product is a grade, a car, some other reward, praise or even just information. The point of learning is not any of these. Rather, it seems to me, the point of learning is . . . learning. It is, we may say, a way to still our curiosity. Temporarily . . . before we feel the urge to learn again. In this context learning may be seen the way we seen eating. What's the point of eating? Well, the point is a temporary sense of satiation combined with on-going physical growth. But the end-products of eating are fleeting unless we keep eating. So, the point of eating is, really, not to stop eating.
Learning is about a kind of hunger. I believe that it is more powerful than the hunger for food. It may be matched only by our hunger for love. Human beings, of all ages, have a natural hunger for learning, a hunger for this dance into new unexplored areas of our world, including ourselves. But like with most things we're hungry for, the hunger for learning can be nurtured or abused. Food advertising--with its delicious looking images, bright colors, sizzling, steaming foods--is a good example of such abuse. It says to us"just grab this burger, stuff yourself with it, don't worry about the rest."
One of the hall-mark criticisms Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels hurled at early industrial societies was their observation that laborers were utterly disconnected from the end-product of their labor. They knew how to make the end-product but they could never have it, own it. It's curious to see that our current western response to that critique seems to be "have the end-product, the finished thing . . . but don't pay attention to how it was made." It is curious also to see (and probably would make both thinkers take several serious turns in their graves) that the focus on end-products has become the new "opium" that is given to the masses to keep quiet, not to rebel. In that way consumerism and particularly end-products have become the new religion (of which Marx and Engels were so critical). Yes, and that is were ex-president G.W. Bush's call to go shopping (after 9/11) belongs. It was literally a call to get high on end-products and to forget processes and learning (for example to learn about the process that led to the disastrous events of 9/11).
It seems that we have traded the process--learning, making, doing--for the end-product (possibly in an attempt to obviate Marx' and Engels' criticism). Never mind that what they really had in mind was a culture in which everyone could own and be part of both production/process and end-product. Never mind either that Marx and Engels, both deeply influenced by the philosophy of Hegel, knew that such process-endproduct dynamic would be fleeting and would have to be repeated infinitely. In other words, the hunger would always return.
Learning as a way to retain information is no different from our impulse to eat fast-food. Really, it's the information we want, not the learning. We're stuffing our brains with information. And this information will sit, unconnected and unexamined and undigested in the meandering vastness of our brains. It will cause diarrhea and constipation. What it will not do is sustain a natural flow and growth of mental, spiritual and physical capacities. And if we have been sick with those "mental digestive illnesses" for a while we will lose our appetite! In other words, the best way to squelch and extinguish that hunger is to feed it information. Information is the junk-food of so many educational institutions today. They may have agreed to remove vending machines that make soda and chips available to students. But they have yet to agree to shut off the greatest vending machine they themselves are: an apparatus that intentionally replaces learning with information.
Weeks before I graduated from high-school in Germany one of our science teachers stopped what he was talking about, his face became quite serious and he said: Dieser Punkt in ihrem Leben wird wahrscheinlich der Punkt Ihres groessten Wissens sein. Von nun wird Ihr Wissen wohl spezifischer, aber auch wieder kleiner." (This is the point in your life where you have reached the greatest [quantity] of knowledge. From here on out your knowledge will likely become more specific, but, overall, it will shrink again.") What he forgot to mention (likely because he didn't think it was important) is that, hopefully, at this point in our lives we had learned enough about learning to continue with it. It is not the quantity of information that matters at all. It is that we learned to engage with learning itself. What he forgot to say is "I hope you will continue to be curious, to explore, to take risks trying something new . . . I hope you will continue to be open to learning."
Why don't we care more about learning? Why do we always--always--prioritize the end-product of learning: the learned bit of information? About two decades ago it was fashionable to say "information is power." I have to admit I never understood that phrase. I don't only mean I did not understand its content. I failed to make logical sense of it. How could information, for example, the phrase "dinosaurs are extinct" (clearly a piece of information) amount to power (i.e., a dynamic moving force that can sweep away, carry us, enliven and kill us). Gathering information, collecting pieces of information is a little bit like a trip to the hard-ware store in order to fix a plumbing problem. All the parts I supposedly need to fix the problem are there. But when I try to put them together at home I realize that having the parts will not help me in any way. What helps me is what I know about learning . . . I know how to experiment and be patient, I learned how to read a description of what I need to do, I learned how to improvise, I learned how to appreciate the different properties of different substances and materials (wood, clay, metals, paints, etc. but also words, thoughts, feelings), I learned how to let go of a stubborn problem and return to it later, I learned how to ask for help, I learned not to be discouraged by failure, I learned how to surrender when all my skills are still not sufficient. And, yes, all those learning experiences are also experiences of gathering information. But it is information gathered in the context of learning.
One thing common to all deeper learning experiences seems to be the presence of deep time. Deep time is not necessarily related to the length of time we have to learn something. Some things are learned at light-speed's pace and are never forgotten. Others we learn slowly, over the course of many years, before we have truly integrated the experience. Deep time is a way of making sense of the engagement we feel with a thing, subject or a problem. For me one prime example of such deep time spent with a "thing" is my aquarium. For the longest time I thought I would write a book called "All I Ever Needed to Know I Learned From Observing Life in My Fish Tank."
For my youngest son such deep time is dedicated to birds.
About a year ago during a visit to Germany with my three sons, my father suggested a visit to a bird-park about 40 miles south of Hamburg.
As a boy I had been to this park once or twice. Most of what I had retained from that visit were images of birds in cages who seemed colorful and interesting at first, but the more rows of cages we passed by the less interesting the birds in them seemed to get. So, I was only lightly excited about the prospect of visiting that park again. And I was sure my sons would likely leave there with a sense of boredom (Why did we do that?).
As it turned out the rows of cages were still there. And we passed them by as quickly as I had 45 years earlier. In fact, given our focus on end-products, it seems true to say that the birds in those cages seemed like end-products of sorts, a description attached to each cage, they sat there quietly resembling museum exhibits more than anything live. The event that truly changed everything about this visit was the live, free-flight bird-show put on by park-staff daily. This was an occasion to show off birds doing what we possibly admire them most for: flying.
It was a beautiful show with parrots, secretary birds, hawks, eagles and other birds flying across an open space the size of three football fields, circling the field, returning only to swoop down towards the audience, only inches away from our heads. But by far the most impressive part was the free flight of the condors. Park staff had positioned themselves on several corners of the field, two of them holding Andean Condors on their arms. And then, to the sound tracks of Star Wars and Darth Veder, they swung the Condors in the air and these huge birds flew with slow and measured beats of their wings across the field and onto the arm of the opposing park-staff. Even though this event is put on many times each year, it felt like a once in a life-time event to us, the audience. Out of the corner of my eye I was watching my sons and even the eldest (not known as one to be easily impressed with much) smiled with appreciation and excitement.
But the person whose life was really changed by this event, by what he saw that day, was my youngest son, Gabriel, 6 years at the time. Gabriel had discovered a passion. And this passion made him hungry. Hungry for more learning.
On that same trip, just a few days after the park visit, Gabriel implored me to by him a German birding book. I had already thought of buying a book for him, but more fitting for his age-group, not an encyclopedia of the birds of Europe. I was focused on big pictures, big print and maybe some, but not too much, information about the birds. But he wanted the 400 + page pocket guide to the birds of Europe. When I bought it for him reluctantly I was sure I'd soon find that book next to other things he had wanted but quickly discarded. I was wrong. This book, along with a North American birding book we already had at home in the US, along with the catalogue my father had, also reluctantly, acquired for him at the park became sacred reading for him; reinforcement of the initial excitement he had felt at the park. It became the initial food for his hunger and will to learn.
This passion, this hunger for learning, send tidal waves of interest and curiosity into all directions of the world for Gabriel. I had initially thought of making a list of all the things he learned and is learning based on this initial experience. Then I realized the list would be infinite. So, I can only appeal to our imagination to appreciate the scope of what Gabriel discovered for himself here. Birds and stuff relating to birds have become his paradigm of learning and of understanding the world. Just as for me my aquarium became such a paradigm and, to this day, informs much of what I think of the world and how I conceive of its many intricacies, problems and joys.
It seems to me that judging learning based on the utility of the end-product can lead us down the dangerous path of underestimating the multiplicity of tools, instruments, situations and encounters that can feed our learning hunger. How concerned should we really be, then, about our kids reading mostly comics and not the classics, about them playing video-games in ways that have been labeled "addictive." How concerned should we be when school-aged kids respond to the question "what's your favorite subject?" "Recess!" Can we become more comfortable with the idea that kids will choose their own learning paradigm? Can we understand that offering one paradigm might just not lead to anything they're currently interested in and that forcing them to be interested will likely hamper their learning more than it will further it. Can we be okay when our children, though they're supposed to learn and be interested in trees, are really more interested in bugs?
On our part, the part of the teachers and parents, watching our children learn requires tolerance, trust, hope and a good deal of a wide-angle, non-myopic perspective to stick with them as they go about learning their way into the world.
