Comments on: In Defense of “Aimless” Learning

By: Mark

Mark — Thu, 23 Oct 2008 16:47:21 +0000

@Ben: Very eloquently put. Many thanks for reading and for lending your voice. ~Mark

By: Ben

Ben — Thu, 23 Oct 2008 09:32:15 +0000

My close to four decades of living has lead me to the following – life needs to be embraced as a life-long learning experience. I think that undue emphasis is placed on obtaining a degree (undergraduate and upwards) as the pinnacle of learning. I work at a university, a few years shy of two decades, as an audio/visual technician and many students are amazed at my eclectic interests and knowledge – like I should just be learned in audio/visual technology. Learning comes from reading, cooking meals for my family, being a father, solving Sudokus and other puzzles, reading blogs and so on.

The key to embracing “aimless” learning is to be internally motivated by an endless curiosity about life. Being compelled to “formally” learn to meet external motivations – studying for a career – not a passion, going to college because it’s the parental expected and socially accepted path to “knowledge” seems to me to be a recipe for growing a dislike of learning.

My last point may be controversial, but it comes from many years of observation, that the higher education system is broken because it compels young adults to choose a determined path, when they really need to roam free and obtain learning from the world of work.

Cheers,

Ben

P.S. I’ll check out some of the other entries on this blog.

By: by Mark

by Mark — Wed, 22 Oct 2008 19:46:17 +0000

@Girl from EU: As you and reader Dan both remind, it’s likely that all of us know somebody who defies the mercenary education model out of a passionate love of knowledge/culture in its own right. And these folks, though it seems we’re meant to forget it, have exemplars all through history (a great many of them artists whose works have been – ironically – canonized, anthologized, and codified for use in university instruction!). @Grover: Many thanks for directing me to the Stevenson. “…All experience as a single great book.” Ah, yes. I sense the makings of a future CommonSensical post! @SugarMag: Funny, your note about taking a degree at 36 reminds me that despite all my earnest protestation in this post, I still toy with the notion of ‘completing’ my institutional education…. Maybe someday it will seem personally necessary – and will be possible to do gratis. For now, I’m having too much fun reading, writing, and roaming. Best to you as you do the same. @ExpatKat: Your kids are lucky for your insights. More power to you and them! @all: In all this discussion I’m reminded of Morris Berman’s book The Twilight of American Culture (2000), which I profiled briefly in a post this past summer. Berman, admittedly a bit of a crank, does a refreshing takedown of our emerging cultural attitudes concerning higher ed, what he calls the “kowtowing of university administrations to market forces (consumer demands).” “In an educational world now subsumed under business values, students show up – with administrative blessing – believing that they are consumers who are buying a product.” And he quotes from Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations: “Another bad effect of commerce is that the minds of men are contracted and rendered incapable of elevation. Education is despised, or at least neglected.”

By: ExpatKat

ExpatKat — Wed, 22 Oct 2008 16:46:12 +0000

I have a Masters degree which has so far been no use to me during my life. My husband has no degree at all, but has become top of his field!
We have 3 children and have lived in three countries in the past 15yrs. Our High schoolers are now trying to adapt to American culture that prizes formal education above experience, yet live within a family that is testiomony to the opposite.
I believe strongly in lifetime learning and that there is more to a person than their SAT scores or a degree.
We are totally anti-debt and dread having to fund our kids education here with loans, but are afraid that US society may not recognise the skills they have acquired from their unique childhood.
I guess we’ll just have to hope that ‘the powers that be’ expand their minds’ by reading this!!

By: SugarMag

SugarMag — Wed, 22 Oct 2008 14:19:47 +0000

Nice post. I fully support “mindless learning”.

Probably because I did the same – didn’t finish a degree until age 36 – and had 190 undergrad credits in every field of study, just not enough in the right place until I decided to pay attention to finishing. Glad I did though. I don’t use it for work so I can still respect myself

Still got plenty of reading, coversing and traveling to do too.

By: Grover

Grover — Wed, 22 Oct 2008 12:39:16 +0000

Robert Louis Stevenson also had something to say on this topic in his essay "An Apology for Idlers."

By: girl from EU

girl from EU — Wed, 22 Oct 2008 08:06:28 +0000

Great post. I have a degree and I’m glad I chose courses I was passionate about, but I know people who saw their directions in life by themselves. A most inspiring example is a person who, instead of becoming an engineer as his parents wanted, studied as autodidact and is now a published writer as well as a (wonderful) translator from 2 languages. Too bad culture per se is so undervalued nowadays. I’ll never be paid accordingly to my real skills and knowledges while other people who can hardly speak properly (cough marketing cough) act as masters of the world.

By: Mark

Mark — Tue, 21 Oct 2008 18:12:56 +0000

Nice anecdote about Holmes, Dan. I hope I remain as open to mind-expansion if I should be lucky enough to reach such an age. ~Mark

By: Dan

Dan — Tue, 21 Oct 2008 13:16:42 +0000

The three most intelligent people I know do not have a college degree. They all are voracious lifetime readers. Learning is a lifetime pursuit. Chief justice Oliver Wendall Holmes, while reading Plato’s Republic at 92 years old, was asked by a friend why he was reading it. He said “To expand my mind.”