From Judith McDaniel
It’s not a new concept, lifelong learning. Before formal education, before public schools became responsible for “socializing” the young, lifelong learning was the only kind of learning. When our ancestors needed to do something, they learned how. Whether it was how to cross the prairie in a covered wagon, how to cut down an impossibly large tree in order to farm the land, they learned. Sometimes the learning came from books, but more often it was a function of talking to someone who knew, someone who had “done it,” or just figuring it out by trial and error.
Today, lifelong learning is becoming a commodity. Universities are using it to raise their tuition pools. Businesses are using it to convince workers that job training can benefit workers personally.
But I don’t want to lose track of the fact that most of us continue to learn throughout our lives—not for credit or salary increments—but because we are curious. Basic curiosity is the driver behind many things. Inventions. Gossip (he did what? why do you think?). And learning. Sometimes it is learning of the “how can I?” which is similar to invention. But more often, it is learning about how others lived or are living their lives.
I have college students (18-21 year old range) who are equally fascinated with Medea’s predicament as Euripides presents it, with Clarissa Dalloway’s truncated choices as Virginia Woolf presents them, and with society’s failure to support our children as dozens of novelists and poets present this issue—now and in the past. And why wouldn’t they be fascinated? After all, they are learning about human emotions, human responses, human limitations. This is not a curiosity that is going to diminish when they leave the university for the “real” world.
So why shouldn’t we all have access to a similar forum for discovery? What might that look like? I think it would have a common reading or source of knowledge, the chance to exchange ideas and opinions with others who are exploring the same text or issue, and guidance by a facilitator who has expertise in this area.
What do you think?
