“A samurai once asked Zen Master Hakuin where he would go after he died. Hakuin answered ‘How am I supposed to know?’
‘How do you know? You’re a Zen master!’ exclaimed the samurai. ‘Yes, but not a dead one,’ Hakuin answered.” ~Zen mondo
And so goes my thoughts about how I learn. It once seemed almost beyond me to think that we possibly “know” something without experiencing it at some level. Long before I had ever heard the word “constructionism” I was the kid in class that would ask why or how, always needing more proof, and it would often come down to “show me” or better yet let me do it before I could truly believe. I can think of numerous times in my life when I was being “taught” something and couldn’t wait to get to the part where I could actually “do” the thing being taught.
An easy example that comes to mind is when my father was showing me how to use the lawnmower, not exactly something I was looking forward to. He explained how to make sure it had gas and oil, gave me the basics on how the motor worked to turn the blade, covered the important safety aspects and then spent a good deal of time instructing me on the logistics of how to mow the lawn. His motivation was likely threefold… hoping to not loose all the flowers, trees and shrubs, making sure I still had ten fingers and toes when I was done mowing, and getting out of mowing himself. But during my mowing lessons all I could think about was getting on with it, let me actually start the darn thing and cut some grass! It wasn’t until I had experienced it myself that I felt that I had really learned to mow. In spite of the great intent and instructions from my father, the learning came from the doing.
Of course I did a horrible job mowing the first few times and I quickly came to understand why my father didn’t want to mow the lawn himself. But soon I came to know that I could make money mowing lawns and thus I now had motivation to get even better. I continued to build on my experience, checking my own performance, watching how others mowed their lawns, and I worked at improving my efficiency. Soon I was on my way to mowing half of the neighborhood and saving up for that dirt bike I so desperately wanted.
I realize that this is a simple example of how I learn, and it’s based on a sort of “face value” view of what happened back then. What I have learned since, and especially reinforced in the past few weeks of learning from classes, from cohorts, and from my textbooks, is that my perception about how learning takes place tells as much about me as it does about what learning actually took place. Recognizing this other dimension of my learning style and how I believe others learn has led me to better understand other aspects of my learning preferences.
As an example throughout my adult life I have never been drawn to believe in statistics, charts and graphs. For me it’s always been the old adage “liars figure and figures lie.” I’ve clearly fallen on the side of qualitative verses quantitative in my trust and therefore my assimilation of knowledge. But over these past few weeks I’ve gained a heightened awareness that my assumptions about learning are not necessarily correct, that there are many ways people learn, and it’s not all the same as the way I learn. My “quantitative” and “positivists” friends in class have made very good arguments about the validity of their deductive beliefs as applied to learning. I must say that questioning my beliefs wasn’t at first a comfortable thing for me. Like the mowing lessons from my father, I have a growing need to take another look at the realist epistemological approach to learning. I’m not necessarily taking the word of others, I’ll need to see it, experience it, understand it and learn it for myself. So far my motto is still “live and learn.” I’d sure be interested in your perspective too.
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