A Learners’ View (ALV) Is Of Choices On The Shortest And Fastest Path To Learning, The Oxygen of Society
A Note to Readers
Status: Draft
First Drafted: 2015
Last Edited: July 11, 2018
I have spent most of seven decades watching and listening to what people do, identifying how they do it, and how they change what they do. I’ve tried to be respectful, an interested enquirer, which I still am, not a judge or inquisitor. I tried to stress objectivity over opinion and judgment when addressing what others do. I’ve collected notes and memories that sample what I’ve seen, heard, and done.
As a scientist, I identified myself as a participant observer, one who systematically takes part in social activities in order to describe what people do and under which conditions they do it. The identification seemed to come naturally, since I was raised among people who said that our religious faith directed us to be among people in society, but not to be of them, that is, not to participate in activities that violate this faith or that harm others.
This approach has allowed me the privilege of working with some of the top achievers and influencers in education and human services, and to find out how they did what they did to accomplish so much. It also allowed me to watch, listen to and talk informally with leaders in about 60 countries, some at the highest level, about ways they handled their professional responsibilities and their non-professional life. These include names now in history books as well as those with other forms of celebrated recognition.
As a parent, teacher, and professor, I’ve tried to replicate some of what I’ve observed. I’ve also shown others how to do the same as well as how to study and report social life systematically and objectively. So it’s clear, I made unintended mistakes along the way, some that I could not repair. However, those events helped to clarify the range of tolerance for differences and what people would do when faced with differences in those circles.
I found the most open learners while participating in the early years of the electronic tablet market. Purchasers, known as early adopters, actively sought techniques and information about what started as toys and have continued to evolve as phenomena that has changed societies into one interconnected body of electronic users already counted in the billions.
Taken together, one thing stands out: people are loosing the art of learning from teaching. This can have devastating effects on society. It’s difficult to attribute this loss to any specific cause such as changes in technology, urbanization, etc.
Limits may exist to how and how much people can learn. Science has yet to answer those questions. At the same time, people seldom challenge the limits of learning in and about their daily life, with exceptions perhaps for people untrained for living in extreme deprivation.