Teaching Students to Learn How to Learn – Lifelong Learning
Indo-US Workshop on Effective Teaching at College/University Level
IIIT Delhi, India, February 10-12, 2011
Sumit Ghosh
Abstract
Although learning and teaching have been important since time immemorial,the meta-issue, “to learn how to learn” is becoming increasinglyimportant today. In the future, this skill will become absolutely vital tosurvive and thrive. Worldwide, higher education is on the chopping block asSovereign debt crises and Depression begin to engulf the nations, one byone. Already, Europe and the Baltic States are witnessing violent riots,led by students, and civil unrest is steadily inching its way into the US.Philosophically, we seem to be utterly confused and we are rapidly losing asense of direction about the future of our society and what role willhigher education play in shaping our collective destiny, if at all. In theUS, while private universities are desperately trimming their expenses,state supported universities are facing unprecedented and massive budgetcuts. Even the top-ranked University of California system had institutedfurloughs. This will inevitably result in near-zero hiring of new faculty,while senior and experienced faculty will be urged to retire or forced toleave. With a skeleton faculty, students will experience great difficultycompleting their programs. Worse, they will encounter an unprecedenteduphill battle trying to acquire an understanding of the very difficult andoften subtle scientific, mathematical, computational, and engineeringskills, inherent in high technology, which will be critical to obtainmeaningful and gainful employment. Clearly, students as well as experiencedengineers and scientists who may have fortuitously and successfullymastered the skill of self-teaching and self-learning, assuming otherresources are available, will have a superior edge in advancing themselvesover all others. The most iconic and celebrated examples of self-taught individualsinclude Srinivasan Ramanujan in India, Leonardo da Vinci in Italy, and Abraham Lincolnin the US. In fact, records reveal that the greatest minds throughouthistory were all self-taught. In this workshop session, we will analyze indepth the reasons why “to learn how to learn” will become the mostimportant and relevant educational paradigm in the coming age of cyberspaceand what the great minds had to say about this style of learning. Theirlife lessons can guide us and they truly deserve to be labeled our, “greatteachers.”
Introduction
The paradigm of self-learning, i.e., learning on one’s own, had been one ofthe primary mechanisms in ancient times, given the lack of knowledgeable and willing teachers as well as the absence of a formal educationalinfrastructure. Furthermore, genuine teachers were often idealistic andwould elect to remain anonymous, in an attempt to avoid being inundatedwith too many students, especially those that they deemed as unworthy orunethical. With the onset of a formal, open to all, public education system, whichhas evolved today into a comprehensive higher educational infrastructure,worldwide, logically, the need for self-learning should have been renderedobsolete. Indeed, over the past 70 years, students would routinely enrollin academic programs in higher educational institutions, obtain degrees ordiplomas upon completion of the programs, and find useful employment. From time to time when a specific high-tech area would fall out of favor, such as the demise of the aerospace industry in the late 1970s and early 1980s, the government would step in with funding to enable the unemployed to receive retraining in emerging high-tech areas. Atthe highest level of educational innovation, institutions such as Bell LabsResearch (Holmdel and Murray Hill in New Jersey), Xerox Palo Alto ResearchCenter (Palo Alto in California), IBM Research (Yorktown Heights in NewYork), and General Electric Corporate Research and Development Center(Schenectady in New York), all in the US, would offer to expose selectindividuals to leading edge science and technology so they can, in turn,become innovators for the future and create the next generation ideas,products, and services. Based on his first-hand experiences and up closeassociations with all four institutions, the author can testify to theirmany amazing successes.
The worldwide financial crisis of 2008, which drove unemployment across theboard and especially in high-tech areas through the roof; the continuingstruggle for existence of the high-tech companies, epitomized by the factthat General Electric and other companies were providedlifeline loans at no-interest by the US Federal Reserve in secret; and thedeeply disappointing reports of failures in education [1][2][3][4] at everylevel have undoubtedly shaken the foundation of our modern society. A bit ofsoul searching and honest critical analysis reveals that the problemsmerely arrived at a climax in 2008; they had been long in the making. Infact, over the past 30 years, there had been virtually no genuineinnovation in the major high-tech areas, including computer architecture,networking, and software. Even in medicine, law, public policy, financialservices, and other areas, if computers are taken out of the equation,genuine progress amounts to very little to nil.
Leading educators from all over the world, from the US to Taiwan, Korea,France, Austria, Germany, Brazil, Japan, India, and others are suddenlyfaced with a crisis. With so many young people with college degrees acrossthe board, including computer science and engineering, unable to secureaspired jobs, we cannot overlook the possibility that, perhaps, ourcurrent educational model is no longer relevant in the twenty-first century.
Why the Need for Self-Learning Today?
In sharp contrast to the past, when a highly educated individual would workat a single organization throughout his or her life, today, unbeknownst tomost people, a typical computer science and engineering professional willchange jobs an average of 17 times throughout his or her career. Whilethere may be many reasons and explanations for this new development, someof which may be debatable, the evidence is undeniable. What are its implications? First,clearly, employers no longer find individuals with degrees from eliteinstitutions useful beyond a certain length of time. Second, a degree froma highly reputed academic institution, is no longer a guaranteed ticket toa lifelong career and good life. Third, while a degree from a topinstitution in a top field can certainly help one land a lucrative job forthe first, second, and even third jobs, eventually, the content begins tomatter. That is, what one knows and how he or she is able to use it tosolve challenging and never-before-seen problems become much moresignificant than where the person may have studied. In essence, thetraditional knowledge that is imparted to the student in the traditionalway may no longer be relevant. Fourth, an individual with a degree from alackluster school has the potential to surpass those with degrees fromelite institutions. This may bear an unseen profound significance in thatwhile elite institutions may cost over $200,000 for a 4-year degree or a2-year professional degree, the less than well-known schools typically costabout $40,000. Today, when US students are carrying an education loan debtthat is unprecedented in the history of the world and cannot even bedischarged in a bankruptcy, the implications are far reaching.
It is the author’s humble contention that, in the twenty-first century, wewill witness multiple professional career changes in addition to 17+ jobchanges. This will be brought about by a newly emerging fact that advancesin stem cell experimentation and computers will extend the average lifespan to 125 years and people’s mental faculties and health will remainintact for them to work through their 90s.
Under these circumstances, it is imperative that we sincerely analyze thereasons that have forced upon us a crisis in higher education. In the latenineteenth century and throughout the twentieth century, the world hadembarked on a noble paradigm, namely, abandon the elitist,education-for-the-few mindset and embrace mass-scale, public education forthe general good. While the intent was laudable, the understanding andimplementation were both flawed. As in the idiom which warns that thegreatest darkness lies directly underneath a burning lamp, the leadingeducators had failed to realize that, fundamentally, true education isone-on-one. This principle formed the basis of the classical technique practiced in ancient India and by Socrates and Plato. The reason is as follows. Everyone individual is endowed by Nature with uniquecapabilities and limitations and only a genuine teacher, driven by his orher spontaneous compassion and care, can reach out to every student'sindividual “education blind-spots” and illuminate them. A mass-scaleeducation, where a single professor is assigned to teach a class of 30 or200 students, is based on an obviously erroneous assumption that allstudents are equally endowed. The current, mass-scale education is agreat economic model from the business perspective, namely high andimmediate profitability. However, education is about the long-term futureof nations and the overall civilization, not the bottom line. We must face adifficult truth, namely, that the mass-scale style of education may havecontributed to the development of mindless drones, incapable of thinking,let alone innovation. Many of the leading sociologists are now attributingthe educational style as the primary cause of the deindustrialization ofthe US and other industrialized nations. Today, developing countries arewitnessing a boom in high technology, as they expend significant effort incatching up with the industrialized nations. However, US’ problems todayare likely to threaten them too in due course of time. The flawedimplementation of the mass-scale education has also created in students andin society a sense of entitlement, namely, spend money and get a degree,following which the graduates deserve well-paying jobs. Lost is the truth that thetrue purpose of education is to serve humanity in one's own unique ways,whether low- or high-technology.
Proposed Approaches
Unbeknownst to most of us, a key reason why today's students find it hardto learn on their own is that we tend to spoon feed them. Under a genuineconcern that knowledge is doubling every 2-4 years and that we need to pushas much information as possible in the classrooms, we do not afford ourstudents the time to think independently and grow. Ironically, in our questto make the students more valuable in a very narrow segment of thehigh-tech economy, we are unwittingly condemning them to become obsolete assoon as the current high-technology specialization or programming language falls bythe wayside, which happens all too quickly.
There are other challenges, including obsessive grade consciousness,plagiarism, vindictive teacher evaluation, and, most important, a profoundhidden disrespect for education and educators, which stems from a beliefthat education is just another commodity which can be bought by money.
Our approach calls for a debate in the international educational communityand it must involve academia, industry, and the policy making arms of governments. Assuming that the debate converges on self-learning as a keymechanism to move forward, we will then focus on the characteristics of theteachers, books, and other resources to facilitate self-learning.
References
[1] Mary Beth Marklein, “Report: First two years of college show smallgains,” USA Today, 18 January 2011.
[2] David Segal, “Is Law School a Losing Game,” New York Times, 8 January2011.
[3] Jacques Steinberg, “How Much Do College Students Learn, and Study?” New York Times, 17 January 2011.
[4] Less than half of students proficient in science, Associated Press, 26January 2011.