Learning

To learn means ‘to gain knowledge or skill by studying, practising, being taught, or experiencing something‘. This is basically a process that happens all the way throughout life. It never stops, because we continue to find ourselves in ever changing situations and circumstances, and they all can teach us something. Of course, attending a class doesn’t necessarily mean that one has learned something! We need to be willing and able to learn the particular lesson we are being presented with. And we don’t have the talent to learn it all equally well. Our ‘grades’ on various subjects may differ greatly, but there is always the possibility of gaining some knowledge or skill.

Repetition is an important issue in learning. It establishes pathways within the system that open up easily on a specific trigger and allows the system to delve deeply into the stored data base, in a specific and directed manner. In a sense, it is a similar natural system as this of the cell antenna that, after picking up a specific frequency, sends a signal into the cell, which sets in motion a very specific response. Once you have learned something the specific trigger will activate the knowledge or skills in the way it has been stored within the memory bank of the system. Gaining new knowledge or skills can then be seen as writing a new pathway, creating a new connection, to a stored, learned, response. To drastically change what we have learned in the past is, in principle, as difficult as changing our behaviour habits. In general, we find it difficult to alter long held ‘knowledge’. For example, it took over a century for humanity to accept that the earth does not sit at the centre of the universe, or that black people are no lesser human beings than white people.

Understanding that knowledge and skills are in constant motion and are changing over time, it should make us wise – we can learn this lesson – to the fact that our knowledge, what we believe to be true or correct, will be replaced by a more ‘accurate’ knowledge at some later date. So we may learn that infectious diseases are healing responses, whereby the misnamed ‘pathogen’ is not causing the situation but is helping to resolve it. So we may learn that changes within the climate is part of a natural cycle and is not being triggered by human activity, or that CO₂ doesn’t play a significant role in the greenhouse effect. So we may learn that waging war and creating conflict is never resulting in an ever lasting peace. So much we are able to learn, to move our knowledge and skills forward, if only we allow ourselves to be susceptible to other ideas, if only we accept that our firm belief is potentially completely wrong. By listening to a different teacher, by studying different material, or studying it in a different way, we can process new information, which is the first requirement for learning. We cannot learn anything if we are not prepared to open ourselves up to different study material.

The material that we are presented with is asking for our attention. When we give it our attention we are creating, in a manner of speaking, an antenna equipped with a new frequency. This is the physical expression of giving it your full attention: you listen out for that specific frequency. Now you have your antenna, and through this focus you are being ‘taught’ to have the right response to the stimulus. Hence, when you have learned that the earth is a sphere floating around the sun, then that knowledge will be immediately accessed whenever the earth as a planet is mentioned. This is the programme your system has written and stored, and that will be activated as soon as that frequency, that topic, enters your environment. Knowledge may be understood as ‘the way in which individuals and societies apply meaning to experience’. It can therefore broadly be seen as the information, understanding, skills, values and attitudes acquired through learning. As such, knowledge is linked inextricably to the cultural, social, environmental and institutional contexts in which it is created and reproduced. In other words, your personal knowledge has been created by the people around you.

Wisdom, however, is ‘having the power of discernment and judging properly as to what is true or right’. Wisdom is the ability to use your knowledge, experience, and understanding to make sound judgments, discern the truth, and act sensibly. It is the natural ability to understand things that most other people cannot understand. Being informed by other people about what is a right or wrong judgment is knowledge, not wisdom. It is the knowledge that others want you to have. Wisdom is to sense how to use the knowledge you are holding. Knowledge is the collective of the beliefs one holds, which is an academic skill. Wisdom is sensing when and how to use that collective, which is a sense, like an intuition.

How do we learn? What are the main sources of our knowledge? How do we acquire knowledge?

• Perception or observation, i.e. using one of the senses, is identified as the most important source of empirical knowledge. It is an active process in which sensory signals are selected, organised, and interpreted to form a representation of the environment. This leads in some cases to illusions that misrepresent certain aspects of reality, but observing life around you remains the most reliable source of knowledge about life and about the world.
• Introspection often acts as a form of fundamental or basic knowledge. According to some empiricists, they are the only sources of basic knowledge and provide the foundation for all other knowledge. It is the most reliable source of knowledge about life and your inner-self.
• A teaching method is a set of principles and methods used by teachers to enable student learning. In a teacher-centered approach to learning, teachers are the main authority figure. In student-centered learning, while teachers are the authority figure in this model, teachers and students play an equally active role in the learning process. This approach is also called authoritative. Many teaching methods targeting cognitive skills show quickly disappearing impacts, which confirms that repetition is the most effective way to install new knowledge.

An individual learns in two ways: personal observation or copying another. Personal observation can be directed outwardly or inwardly. Both provide information about life in general and life as it is for that individual. Copying another by being taught in a controlled setting, according to a chosen method, provides information about what another, the community, history, has learned. Personal observation is gathering information via the senses and personal experience. Copying another is gathering information via the cognitive functions, using the brain to ‘remember’ it all and to make conscious decisions based on an interpretation, made by somebody or a group of individuals, of the way they experienced life. In other words, any invented teaching method is aimed at gathering many people behind one thinking pattern to interpret life. It is not the reality of life as experienced by the individual.

Cognitive learning is shaped by the way people think. Intuitive learning is shaped by the way people sense. Our thinking, our logic, is based on accepted, installed, concepts. Other humans have taught us how we are supposed to think about certain aspects of life. This makes it an easy manipulative teaching method, as it can be controlled by the teacher or the teaching institution. How an individual senses a specific situation is unpredictable to another human being, which means that each individual will learn in his or her own way, and that no ‘method’ is going to ensure they all have the same experience and the same knowledge.

Imposing such a method and insisting that the cognitive method needs to be followed if we are to gain knowledge is the implementation of certain people’s ideas to replace the natural learning abilities each individual possesses. Cognitive skills are the functions your brain uses to think, to pay attention, to process information, and to remember things, The imposed teaching method teaches us how to think, what to pay attention to, what information to process, and what we need to remember. It controls what we learn. It ensures we all know the same things. The individual freedom to experience life in your own way is overridden by a selected knowledge somebody has decided we all should know.

Authoritative teaching fills us with knowledge others want us to know.

Personal teaching fills us with knowledge the individual requires. Being an autodidact, or self-taught individual, provides a powerful competitive advantage by fostering deep critical thinking, ultimate schedule flexibility, and massive financial savings over traditional institutional learning. By bypassing standard educational constraints, independent learners develop psychological and practical strengths that translate directly into professional and personal success. So why is this system not the preferred method for teaching?

The absence of formal credentials for an autodidact often creates career hurdles. In other words, society don’t want self-taught individuals! Society wants knowledge they can control, so only ‘properly educated’ individuals will be given privileges such as decent jobs, and will be integrated within the system that governs that society.

The knowledge stored in your brain is what your environment wants you to remember.

The knowledge stored in every cell of your being is what you learned through experience.

One will last your entire life, while the other will fade quickly when it isn’t being repeated frequently.

And they can be seriously in conflict with one another.