Shaping The Young Minds For Lifelong Learning

Get the young lifelong learners ready

This article was originally published on Illumination. Follow me on my Medium profile.

Lifelong learning was introduced by Basil Yeaxlee, an educator in the 19th century. He wrote the first book about it in 1929, almost a century ago, but his ideas on continuous learning after formal education still echo today.

The concept of lifelong learning gained traction after being adopted and discussed in a UNESCO conference in 1960. This conference brought to light the need for continuous learning among working adults. In the 21st century, the importance of lifelong learning has been amplified by disruptive technological changes, making the call for continuous learning more urgent than ever.

When Is The Best Timing For Lifelong Learning?

There is a common misconception about lifelong learning, often believed to start at the end of one’s formal education. Many people associate lifelong learning with working adults who seek to update their skills and knowledge for career development. However, this perception overlooks the true essence of lifelong learning and confuses it with lifelong education — lifelong learning is a personal process, while education is institutional-related.

Undeniably, lifelong learning can be an excellent tool for career enhancement, but one should treat it as a “way of living,” as Yeaxlee advocates in his educational philosophy. Likewise, psychologist Csikszentmihalyi proposed a similar philosophy for living a happy life — flow, a complete focus on meaningful activities that challenge one intellectually yet provide a sense of control in the process and a sense of accomplishment and improvement at the end. Ikigai is a Japanese concept that refers to a way of living where one should engage in meaningful activities that give one a purpose of living.

Lifelong learning is, hence, a way of life that keeps one intellectually challenged but gives one a sense of control and purpose. Given this, we should not put a time frame on when to start lifelong learning. The best time to start lifelong learning is when you become aware of it.

Shaping The Young Minds For Lifelong Learning

As an educator, I view education as part of our lives, but learning is the foundation of a good life. We should shape our children’s minds towards becoming lifelong learners and give them the knowledge and skills to become better learners.

Stay Hungry, Stay Foolish: Feed The Curiosity

Curiosity is the first teacher a child gets. According to neuroscientist Stanislas Dehaene, “Curiosity is the direct manifestation of children’s motivation to understand the world and build a model of it.” Curiosity occurs whenever our brains detect a gap between our existing knowledge and a potential learning area.

Not to mention the great inventor Steve Jobs, who famously said, “Stay hungry, stay foolish,” whose life philosophy was to stay creative and innovative.

“Stay hungry. Stay foolish. Never let go of your appetite to go after new ideas, new experiences, and new adventures.” ― Steve Jobs.

Parents and educators must cultivate children’s ability to discover knowledge that fulfils their curiosity. Whenever children ask a question, instead of answering it directly, try to provide them with resources and directions for discovery. For instance, when a child is curious about wildlife, lead them to read related books or visit websites that provide accurate information about the wildlife.

It is worth noting that learning continues beyond passively receiving information. Instead, learning happens when one can produce an output from the received input. Encourage your children, once they receive the input of what wildlife is about, to come up with ideas related to the input. For instance, make a mini safari out of clay and explain how animals in the wild interact with nature. They can elevate to a more abstract level by predicting the future of wildlife based on what’s happening now.

Feed your children’s curiosity with encouragement, not punishment. When they make mistakes in the learning process or lose interest in digging deeper, instead of punishing them, lead them to rectify or change a topic! The goal is to awaken their internal learning spirit, not to make Einstein in just one step.

Appreciate each ‘AHA’ moment: Make Learning Intrinsically Rewarding.

School and tests are often dull learning because they prevent our children from having control and fulfilment. The absence of control over the learning process frequently causes learning frustration.

Stanford professor Jo Boaler writes about how millions of students are labelled “low-achieving” simply because teachers and educators have overlooked the importance of “opportunity to learn.” Boaler asserts that when students are kept from having the opportunity to learn challenging and high-level work, they will remain low-achieving students.

Boaler believes that parents and educators could work hand-in-hand to give children the best mathematical start in life by creating an environment with a mathematical setting. Puzzles and games are great tools for developing children’s mathematical minds; each time they discover patterns and math knowledge, they will be motivated to learn more.

Parents and educators must help children appreciate the ‘aha’ moments that occur every time they make discoveries in learning by helping them identify the happiness and contentment they experience when learning.

Two Wrongs Make A Right: Errors Are The Essence Of Learning

“The only man who never makes a mistake is the man who never does anything.” — Theodore Roosevelt

In my personal learning experience, I have been taught to avoid mistakes and errors at all costs. We commonly treat errors as an indicator that one has failed to learn. Yet Dehaene opposes this concept and succinctly concludes, “Making mistakes is the most natural way to learn.”

Indeed, every error offers an opportunity to learn because it surprises the learners, although unpleasant, and propels them to learn in an attempt to rectify it. When we encounter something novel and unknown, our brains generate a prediction for the outcome according to the stimuli and our past experiences. We will give it a shot (trial), and it might missed (error), but the size and direction of the error provide the information we need to improve on the subsequent trial.

In addition, the gap between the actual outcome and prediction gives us prediction errors, which surprises our brains. According to Daniel Z. Lieberman and Mike Long, prediction errors are associated with dopamine — a hormone that gives you feelings of pleasure, satisfaction and motivation. Dopamine plays a pivotal role in learning. Hence, finding a way to trigger dopamine can enhance learning.

“The goal of the dopamine system is to predict the future and, when an unexpected reward occurs, to send a signal that says, ‘Pay attention. It’s time to learn something new about the world.’” — Lieberman & Long

Parents and educators must not respond negatively to our children’s learning errors. Instead, acknowledge their mistakes as nothing more than a direction for future learning. Stop labelling mistakes negatively, such as “You are not good at this” or “How could you make mistakes in such simple questions?” To make two wrongs into a right, we must point out the mistakes from a more objective perspective, such as, “I see you make a mistake here because you have confused X with Y. Here is how you can avoid it next time…” Focus on telling them what to do next instead of overly focusing on the mistake itself.

Conclusion

We should adopt lifelong learning as a way of living. Career advancement is not the sole benefit of lifelong learning but also contentment and self-actualisation. Parents and educators must work to cultivate young lifelong learners by satisfying their curiosity, making learning intrinsically rewarding, and acknowledging errors as part of learning.