The student is always ready

The thirty-fifth newsletter is about how to foster true learning

My learning journey only started after school.

As the doors of my high school closed behind me, there I stood. Diploma in hand, looking out over an empty and bleak schoolyard, a tumbleweed blowing past me. I remember thinking: ‘what now?’

I didn’t feel prepared at all to deal with life ahead.

The problem with high school

I didn’t realize this then, but looking back this seems very odd to me. Isn’t school meant (or shouldn’t it help) to prepare us for life after school?

Shouldn’t we be sent off into the real world equipped with some tools that we can use to start building a life for ourselves, possibly even thrive?

It felt like I had to start from scratch. The whole of my high school period felt more like a 7-year pause button on finding my own path. I didn’t feel equipped at all.

I had a bucket of fish but no fishing rod, so to speak.

The school’s system was organized in a way that promoted an attitude of following instead of an attitude of leading. Obstructing true learning. It did so in two ways:

• What was taught.

  Every person is different. We all learn in different ways and at different speeds. But this wasn’t reflected in the subjects being taught. They were all prescribed by the school instead of informed by the students themselves. Sure, we could choose to take or drop some subjects, but only from a pre-written menu. Individuality, personal interests, or learning stage weren’t considered. Everyone was presented with the same material in the same order. Apparently, the teacher appears when the student isn’t ready.

• How it was taught.

  There was an emphasis on memorization and testing, instead of a focus on understanding, digesting, and using the information in real-life situations. This was also the main criticism from students at the time, a common complaint was: ‘why/how/where/when would I ever use this?’. When students don’t understand why they should be learning something, it’s going to be very difficult for them to get interested, curious, and to actually understand and incorporate it.

To me this felt like the following implication (and to be clear, this was never said out loud): ‘You, the student, are not a full human yet. You are not ready to choose and decide for yourself. We (the school and its teachers) know how the world works, so if you follow along and accept our teachings, you can become a full human too. But first you have to learn what we present to you, until you know all the things we think are necessary for you to start making choices and go out into the world.’

For me and many others, this led to an attitude of apathy combined with last-minute cramming. Days before an exam, I quickly tried to memorize only what was necessary to pass the test. And as soon as the test was over, I let it all go just as quickly.

I became an expert in passing tests which, as became apparent after school, proved to be a pretty useless skill. What I encountered ‘outside’ didn’t resemble the world inside my high school at all.

Finding my path and building a life required other things than short-term memorization it turned out.

A glimpse of something better

Learning shouldn't be work. Learning should be excitement … And a teacher is somebody who will facilitate and show how to learn. — Michel Thomas

Of course I had the occasional spark, always caused by an individual teacher bursting with passion for ‘their thing’. Funny enough these inspirational whirlwinds always were radical people themselves, working mainly outside of the school system, doing their own thing (not always to the convenience of the school or themselves).

My first ever biology teacher was one of them. He knew that the fundamentals were the fundamentals for a reason and started (first day, first class) with asking the question: ‘what is life?’ and in subsequent lessons, trying to answer it (incorporating the group of students in the discussion). I learned so much from him. About biology, but mostly about asking questions, how to learn, how to be skeptical, how to be scientific, how to figure something out for myself.

Sadly, he was one of very few. I had many teachers of the ‘armchair’ variety. Trying to transmit knowledge, the facts, or what they ‘knew’ to be true. Preaching their gospel and regurgitating important books.

Not that there was never anything interesting in their lectures, but the way in which they were presented didn’t reinforce the inquisitive attitude that is necessary for true learning. 

True learning

“Nothing taught by force stays in the soul.” — Plato

Learning doesn’t happen when topics are prescribed, imposed, or enforced.

Learning happens when we’re (passionately) interested, curious, or when we’re experimenting and we discover something for ourselves.

Instead of downloading a bunch of unsolicited files onto a student’s hard drive we should aim to teach them how to learn so they can go out and learn on their own.

There should be a greater flexibility in terms of what is presented, and this should be at least partly student-driven. It’s important for the school system to recognize (and infuse the teachers with the idea) that the student has autonomy and that they are the expert in their own life. In short, a coaching attitude.

When we put the focus on student guidance instead of on information transmission, school could be a transformational experience instead of a transactional one.

And we could be handing out fishing rods instead of fish.