I found a crinkled picture a few days ago, circa 1963. Mrs. Captain’s 24 students proudly stood in all their monochromatic glory, with the first year of school under their little belts. And right in the middle, the girl with the grin.
What in the world was I thinking as I looked into that camera?
No doubt I was reveling about how easy learning was. Straight A’s can swell a 6-year-old’s head. With the ABC’s stamped in my brain and a proper introduction to my new friends—Dick, Jane and Sally—I was ready to tackle anything. Learn anything. Become anything.
Maybe if we were 6-year-olds again, we could recapture that wonder of learning.
Remember first grade? All it took was a new box of crayons and a new pair of sneakers, and we were prepared to take on the big world of education. We got to read books with colorful pictures, race through the arithmetic flash cards, write carefully between the lines, and discover important facts about George Washington and America.
Best of all, we knew that if we did a good job learning all that stuff from September to May, the teachers would pass us onto second grade, where we got to do it all over again.
Wowzer!
What happened to us? When did that boundless enthusiasm to learn something vanish?
We adulted.
It doesn’t take a scholar to figure out that our learning priorities changed as we grew older.
Our Learning Priorities in First Grade:
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- Sit close to best friend
- Sharp pencil, book with pictures and lined writing paper
- Subject must make us smarter
- Promise of milk break when we finish
Our Learning Priorities as Adults:
1. Sit close to door
2. Fast computer, concise manual, preprinted lecture notes
3. Subject must be immediately applicable
4. Promise of refreshment break when we finish
Once upon our youth, 1 plus 2 equaled 3—just for the glory of it. Then came the day that biology plus algebra multiplied by Nursing 101 equaled a job, an income, a mortgage, and a way of life.
Along the way, learning turned from discovery to drudgery. But does it have to be?
Why We Don’t Want to Learn Anymore
For some of us, the thrill of education morphed into the drill of perturbation. It flusters us and no longer fits anywhere in our waking world.
1. Homework Nightmares – Raise your hand if you still have nightmares that you didn’t attend a class or take a final test or finish your homework. Forty years later, I still do. The fear of returning to those unlikely situations is enough to squelch any desire to go back there.
2. Schedule Conflicts – Learning something new, whether a hobby, skill or vocation, is on most people’s to-do list… somewhere after “kids graduate” and before “senility”. Then we make it an all-or-nothing deal. We get discouraged by focusing on the final goal— “play piano expertly”—rather than considering more workable steps we could fit in here and there over a year (or a decade). So, we push back our aspirations even further.
3. “It’s work” – For too many adults, the joy of learning has been squeezed out, replaced with a sense of obligation or mandate. Emails at work warn “you must complete your online learning by the end of the month or else…” It’s required for the job. It’s required for the car insurance. It’s required for the licenses.
4. Must be aimed at immediate needs – When we lost the joy of learning, we also lost the adventure of new discoveries around the corner.
• Why learn Spanish for a trip when you’ll have interpreters?
• Why learn to build a fish house when you can buy it complete and fish tomorrow?
• Why learn to operate a ham radio to contact the International Space Station? (No, really. What’s the point in that?)
We easily fall into the groove of demanding instant usage—i.e., the computer training for daily patient charting—and forget that the unknown world is so big and life is so short.
Why We Should Continue to Learn
Learning is not just a matter of stuffing more facts into our brains. Years of research have proven repeatedly that the very process of learning benefits the learner:
1. Learning Develops the Brain – Learning new skills makes the brain grow more neuro-connections, then expands and strengthens those connections throughout the communication network. It actually modifies the brain’s physical structure and reorganizes its contents to make it more efficient.
2. Learning Improves Memory – The connections and reorganizations of your brain strengthen your memory, IF the learning is sufficiently challenging. Research suggests that the brain gain doesn’t just happen by passively listening to classic music or doing a daily word-find puzzle. Just like weightlifting, the greater the active learning challenge, the greater the brain changes.
3. Learning Makes Us More Interesting and Interested – Here’s a “DUH!” for you. Who would you rather spend a long bus ride with: A) someone with a wide range of interests and hobbies, or B) someone who has reached level 3,500 on the Candy Crunch Saga? BE THE PERSON YOU’D WANT TO SPEND TIME ALONGSIDE.
4. Learning Expiration Date? – Why should we stop learning? Whoever put a maximum age on education? Some of the most incredible people I admire continue to learn (and teach). As long as there’s one empty brain cell available, learning is possible.
LEARNING DOESN’T REQUIRE GOING BACK TO COLLEGE
Too often this topic of continued education abruptly ends with “I can’t go back to college.” No one said you had to go.
Make a list of things you’d like to learn: photography, gunsmithing, playing guitar—it’s really up to you. Then make a list of where/how you can learn it:
• Join a club – Facebook has endless groups (from local to international) for nearly every interest
• Start a club, then recruit like-minded members and experts
• Go to the library and find resources; ask about local pros
• Attend weekend workshops, exhibits, trade shows, seminars
• Take a community ed class
The online possibilities are endless:
• online classes and seminars
• online libraries, including The Library of Congress
• subject-related websites
• Explore Pinterest and Youtube
• Google it.
Years ago, I “took a literature class” from an Ivy League University by discovering one of its course syllabuses online and reading the required books—painless. You’re only limited by your determination.
MAKING A “WHY” TURN
Many of us skidded off “Love Learning Lane” and spun ourselves into a rut. Instead of asking “Why does this work?” or “Why is this so amazing?” or “Why didn’t I see that before?” we wedged our “Why” in a pothole so we can only hear the whining “Why do I have to know this?”
Fortunately, we can learn to change our Why of thinking.
The most wonderful thing about choosing to learn as an adult is that it can be done without a final exam, report card, public humiliation, or wage reduction. Hmmm…Found out you don’t like your choice of a new hobby after all? OK, pitch the skein of spun llama yarn, bury the dead topiary plant, and shove the unfinished cabinet out to the curb. Try something else. You’re not doing it for a grade—you’re in it for the joy of doing it.
Do yourself a favor in 2020: plan to learn something new. No excuses allowed. Explore the possibilities as enthusiastically as you used to explore your next crayon color choice. Dream big and then slice it up into doable dimensions. And when you find something that you really love to do—that you never would have dreamed of doing—let me know.
I’ll be outside with a VHF radio, antennae, and my ham radio pals, trying to send our greetings to the International Space Station.