Learning How to Learn

The problem with higher education today to a large extent is that it is still mired in the prelapsarian mindset of teaching content. In an age of instant investigation via any number of technologies, people are still asked to memorize dates and places and names. Now, I realize a doctor has to know where the kidneys reside, but bear with me.

College should teach students how to learn. In the antediluvian days (say, the 50s), content seldom changed. Today it changes by the minute. But the process of learning how to learn doesn’t. As long as we understand and internalize how to learn, we can keep abreast of any content with the aids at our disposal today.

If you don’t think this is important, think about the client or colleague who consistently asks you the same question, who constantly asks you how to do something, who incessantly requires help on the same issues. The reason for that is that they cannot or will not integrate the learning, and we too often tend to enable that flaw.