MEAGAN CLEMENTS | staff writer
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courtesy of Robert Clements
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At 6 a.m., a shrill ring stabs your eardrum. Despite the rising sun rays just outside your window, you and your alarm clock are not on good terms.
You don’t hold your grudge for long—a busy day lies ahead and you plan to make the most of it.
In life, we are presented with new and challenging opportunities. As each day passes, we are faced with important decisions to make and it is up to us to learn and grow from the experiences life affords us.
American industrialist Henry Ford coined the phrase “Anyone who keeps learning stays young.” He argued that the greatest thing in life is to keep your mind young.If we stop learning, we will never reach our potential in life, achieve self-fulfillment or embody true greatness.
American philosopher and author Eric Hoffer once said, “In a time of drastic change it is the learners who inherit the future. The learned usually find themselves equipped to live in a world that no longer exists.”
Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines learning as more than simply “knowledge or skill acquired by instruction or study.”
According to Webster, learning is rooted in experience as well.
Learning goes beyond factual knowledge and is measured on an individual scale. What makes a good learner is one who is filled with curiosity.
The old saying “curiosity killed the cat” is far from true in the eyes of my 91-year-old grandfather.
Despite a lack of formal education, a zest for learning and thirst for knowledge are a few of my grandfather’s meritorious qualities. A youthful man whose curiosity is the spark that keeps his passion for life going strong. He hopes to celebrate his 100th birthday!
Although knowledge and learning are important in helping us become well-rounded individuals, they are not entirely dependent on formal education.
While it is arguable that formal education is the key to acquiring a broader knowledge base, there are an equal amount of lessons to be learned outside of the classroom.
On their critically–acclaimed album aptly titled The Walk, the three-brother band Hanson sing, “Even a strong man falls and even a wise man has to learn.”
Learning is a process. There is value in failure because we learn as much from our failures as we do our successes. If we are constantly in search of instant gratification through grades rather than valuing the learning process, our education may never be of any real value.
If we are always in search of instant gratification through material possessions rather than seeking to better ourselves as human beings, our lives may never be of any real value.
To keep from forgetting what we are taught, we must be in constant search of new knowledge.
Like my grandfather, the adventurous in spirit are open to learning anything. Rather than losing themselves in the fear of the unknown, they find themselves spurred on by new challenges.
It is easy to forget what we are taught if what we are taught has no relevance to our lives today.
Until we can relate chemistry to cooking or cell division to a loved one who’s dying of cancer, what is the motivation for us to learn?
Indeed, there are those like my grandfather who don’t need motivation to learn. The encyclopedia is as captivating to him as Gary Paulsen’s award-winning survival story Hatchet is to a fifth grader.
However even for him, the lust for learning weakens when there is little strength in drawing connections between his past and the present.
Learning is boring at best when no value is placed in the process of learning.
The process of learning is rooted in experience, where inquiry instruction and self-discoveries go hand-in-hand.
According to Teaching Science as Inquiry by Joel Bass, Terry Contant and Arthur Carin, “Research on learning indicates that abstract representations of knowledge, in terms of concepts and principles rather than facts, promote access and transfer.”
In addition, applying what is taught in a classroom to real-life situations and events can help remind students of why they are learning what they are learning.
Professor Tom Hynes once expressed in a music theory class that there is value in listening to actual music—live performances or recordings.
“There is always the risk in college that an accumlation of facts and skills is insufficient to teach the student a truly complete command of an art form or craft,” Hynes said. “Listening to music in different styles—both live performances and recordings—can help reestablish the connection between concrete details and abtstract beauty.”
Life is a vast opportunity to grow and develop and it is up to us to make the most of it.
We must view our failures as opportunities for personal growth, our successes as one step further towards our ultimate goal in life and curiosity as the catalyst that weaves the two together.
In a richly diverse world replete with boundless opportunities and experiences, it is obvious that the only thing keeping us from learning is ourselves.
