Learning

This project I've been working on for Ed Psych, the "Personal Learning Log and Challenge," has summoned me into thinking about a few different things regarding the topic in general of "learning."

Sometimes I take learning, in itself, totally for granted. I think that many of us do this all the time without really even meaning to. I mean that in this way - generally, the average person (and often, myself, included) has no real desire to learn anything. So much of our time is devoted to meaningless pursuits - games, food, alcohol, socializing... You name it. I've been learning all of these new things and getting so much positive work done recently, I began to think: "Why couldn't I just do this all of the time? Is it not true that the greatest people in history, and the greatest among us now, do nothing less? In any field, I can see this being true...

I can see Schubert or Mozart spending every spare moment pouring over sheets of music at his piano.

Socrates never ceasing to question and to pry about the big questions in a human's life.

Oppenheimer dedicating hour after hour, day after day into the work that would eventually create the atomic bomb. And his knowledge quest that must have taken place before that which led up to that point.


I sometimes wonder if the value that our modern society places on education (or lack thereof, rather) will be the ultimate factor leading to our downfall. If not the downfall of the human race, then at least of this country. Why is it that the people most willing to learn are the people most inconvenienced in order to do so? I think back to my reading of "Three Cups of Tea" and remember those kids in rural Pakistan, working by themselves on arithmetic problems in a field - scratching their work into the ground with sticks. They put so much time into what amounts to so little. Yet we, with our computers, our institution of higher learning, and our (relative) economic well-being here at Luther largely are living our lives weekend-to-weekend, with school and studies taking place only as a hassle to be circumvented in between.

With these realizations, I have made to myself a vow to try and be more purposeful about learning and my respect of it. I hope that you, in reading this, will join me in an effort to do the same.


Alex