Life Long Learning#

One of the ‘goals’ of the nursing department is that we develop ’life long learners’. What this means, I suppose is up for some debate but I think, generally, that what is meant is that we prepare our students to learn how to identify their professional learning needs and help them develop the skills needed to meet those on-going needs. After all, health care is an ever-evolving field and constant learning is required. As I have pointed out to my students for many years, many of the diseases that we deal with today were not identified

when I was in school. Nor were many of the procedures that are routinely conducted today. So, if the professional is to remain a professional he or she is required to constantly learn new information about those diseases, procedures, and so forth.

To aim to prepare our students to continue to learn is, clearly, an important goal. But, as I think about it, I’m not sure that it’s the right goal. I was watching a TED talk by Dr. Bernie Dunlap the president of Wofford College in South Carolina, a few days ago and after a 20 minute talk on the influence of various Hungarians on his life, he got to the real point of his talk. He was chronicling the interaction over dinner at his home between Dr. Francis Robicsek, a cardiovascular surgeon and collector of french art and Mayan art and Roger Milliken, CEO of Milliken & Company about, of all things, a Harry Potter movie. The crux of the story was that the two were arguing over whether the second Harry Potter movie was as good as the first. That these two titans should be discussing, much less arguing, over such a mundane thing seems unfathomable. In his winning stroke, Dr. Robiscek said, “I bet you went to the movie with a child” to which Milliken replied that he did. Robiscek closes in for the kill: “Ah-hah! I went all by myself!” In that moment, says Dunlap he realized the essence of life-long learning. It was, he says, that “insatiable curiosity, that irrepressible desire to know, no matter what the subject, no matter what the cost” that represents life long learning. It isn’t simply learning that which one needs to know to remain current in one’s field but the desire to know more about more things. To understand in greater depth the totality of human knowing and experience that defines life-long learning. And this, I fear, we do not do well.

Sir Ken Robinson speaks and writes often of the negative impact that our educational system has on creativity. I see his point, even if I don’t fully agree with it. But I think, just as importantly – and perhaps more importantly – our educational system negatively impacts our desire to learn. By insisting on specific performance standards, grading work against some (nominally) objective standard, and a host of other oppressive measures, education has worked against itself by inadvertently discouraging curiosity and exploration in favor of conformity and blind acceptance. Students are provided little incentive and virtually no support in thinking outside the box or of exploring things that are of interest to them but, at least in the minds of others, of little direct value. But value is in the eye of the beholder. Many see a liberal arts education as having little value because such an education does not lead directly to a job. But, the liberal arts graduate has a broader, and deeper, overall skill set than the ‘vocationally’ trained student. That broad education equips them with the skills to adapt to a constantly changing environment in ways that the B-school trained student may not.

Learning requires challenging one’s self. It requires stretching beyond what is known and comfortable. It requires exploring ideas, even the bad ones, to find out what makes them bad and to ferret out any good that might lie hidden within them. Learning requires taking risks to define our limits and to know what lies beyond what we believe we know. It requires considering things that are not within our ken or belief system to understand how others believe as they do and how the two can be reconciled. Learning requires freedom not restrictions.
Yet, my wife was telling me last night that a local elementary school limits students to reading books only with their tested Lexile range. How ridiculous!
Yes, they will find the reading perhaps easier, but how do they extend their reading range, expand their vocabularies, and extend their understanding of the world if they’re not allowed to stretch themselves?