In the school’s mission statement is the phrase
“Enabling youth to learn how to learn …” What does that mean? And how do you
know when it happens?
Mission statements are notoriously imprecise
and aspirational. But that is on purpose. The nature of a mission statement is
to draw us forward, set us on a path, provide a fixed direction, point out the
mountain we would like to reach. Some companies even have two mission statements,
the official one and the unofficial one. For example, this is the case for
Google. Their official mission statement is "to organize the world's
information and make it universally accessible and useful." The
unofficial one, officially recorded in its 2004 IPO prospectus, is “Don’t Be
Evil.” The first statement is predictable and rather dull. But the second is
quite interesting, because it causes the reader to think about what that phrase
could mean in an organization.
Our own school’s mission statement has aspects
of both in it. Schools are about youth and about learning. That much is fairly
obvious. What is less obvious, but all the more important and perhaps worthy of
reflection, is the fact that one part of our mission is to enable youth to
learn how to learn. The focus of the learning is on learning. This focus is part
of the educational environment, whereby not only are facts, figures, rules, systems,
insights, relationships, etc. learned outright. But within that process there
is an intentional effort to enable students to discover the ways that they are
involved in the process of learning itself, are agents in the skill of
learning, and thereby may become more deliberate about the learning that they
want to accomplish.
The more we know about our own learning
process, the better learners we become.
For example, I know that I need a quiet environment in order to learn
well, and that I need to “ramp up” my learning process so that I can get to a
level of engagement that puts things into a higher gear. The simplest example
is from many years ago, when I delayed writing my PhD dissertation (as most
candidates do at some point in the process) until deadlines loomed and
something radical was needed. After thinking about my best learning process,
the solution appeared. For six weeks, I put myself into a Trappist monastery in
California, pictured above, where for five weeks (the first week was for
ramping up) I worked calmly but intensely for many hours of the day in a profound,
natural silence punctuated only by prayers and meals. At the end of that time,
80% of the dissertation was done, basically due to zero radio or TV, simple
vegetarian food, a peaceful setting, and an inescapable personal regimen – no
distractions possible – punctuated by good prayer and liturgy.
That’s only one example, and it may only apply
to me. Your way of learning best is likely to be quite unique. But when you identify
it, the more you may pursue it, and the better you will learn. A friend of mine
who became the CEO of a large company showed me a room next to his third-story office
that was empty except for a window overlooking the outside and two rows of
airplane seats. He told me that he thinks best on airplanes, and so he had this
little room built for his private thinking and planning time. He, in fact, had learned
how he learned best.
When you learn how you learn, you will learn
more quickly, deeply, and intensely. Each new insight about your own learning
will add to your personal set of learning tools, ready to go into action when
needed. How to start? Take a short but serious inventory after you have learned
something really well. What allowed that to happen? Push, push, push for the
reasons. Those results, in the long run, will be more valuable than whatever it
was that you learned really well. Like a coach who is able to reflect back the
small movements or behaviours that will lead to greater performance, by being
your own “learning” coach, you will identify your own best behaviours for
learning.
If someone told us that we could take a pill to
help us learn better, as in the movie Limitless
(2011), we would probably buy a year’s supply. Actually, we have those
pills already inside of us. They just need to be identified and brought into
the light of day. After that, it’s mostly “Take as needed.”
