Learning Clearly

Sandra Dodd
16 February 2020

I'm cleaning up my computer desktop (a neverending task), and came across a note where I saved this:

"Getting mad about the difference between teach and learn is a waste of your life."

I've never been "mad" about the difference. 🙂 I've been thinking about it for longer than most people have been alive. I've read about it, I've written about it, I've helped others understand why it can matter, sometimes. It ALWAYS matters for those who want to unschool. Deschooling won't happen without stepping away from the idea of teaching, and without finding some occurrences of natural learning, picking them up and turning them over. Soon it will be easier to see and understand the kind of learning that happens lightly but deeply.

Someone must have been mad enough about my pointing out that there is a difference between teaching and learning (lots of differences; I could go on) to declare that my life was a waste.

I'm pretty sure my life has not been a waste. 🙂

What Teaching Never Can Be
Sandra Dodd, and others, on "Learning" vs. "Teaching"

Learning is internal. Teachers are lovely assistants at best, and detrimental at worst. "Teaching" is just presentation of material. It doesn't create learning."

Sandra Dodd
21 July 2014

It WILL help to avoid the word "teach." Turn away from teaching and look at learning.

Someone wrote "The internet teaches us things, videos and books teach us things, nature teaches us things, we teach each other."

Yes, in English that's a way to look at those things.
But as long as someone remains fond of, attached to, "teaching" they will not be able to see through that matrix of teachers, education, subject matter, student, lessons to see the vast universe beyond.

Take the veil down and look clearly.

We can learn from the internet. We can learn things from videos and books. We can learn from nature. We learn from each other.

Switching the "teacher" switch back on makes it smaller, and makes the "us" passive and small

-=-"The internet teaches us things, videos and books teach us things, nature teaches us things, we teach each other."

Books TEACH me things?
If I read a book and I don't learn something, was I bad? Was I not a good student, in the presence of that teacher?

What I might learn from a book, though, will be a part of my self, of my being, of my mind, my memories, my connections. It will be bigger than that book, and the learning will continue after the book has been laid aside.

Don't depend on the internet, videos, books, nature or other people to teach you. Don't wait for something outside of you to get around to somehow teaching you.

Learn. Learn for fun. Learn when you don't mean to. Start seeing what natural learning looks like, feels like. Stop using "teach" and you'll be able to see learning more clearly and more deeply.

I followed that immediately with:

Part of that has to do with English. In translations, sometimes it doesn't make much sense. But if in whatever language you're thinking there seems to be information flowing from a teacher or a book toward you/us/your child that is being put in, rather than drawn in, change the terminology if you can.

In a discussion about a French translation I said English had an older word, about picking up the last bits of grain after a harvest—"glean."

Jeanine Barbé wrote: "YES ! Glâner! And it's not an old word!! I often use it. Many people use it ie I've picked a bit of Spanish with my Peruvian roommate = J'ai glâné quelques mots d'espagnol avec ma colocataire péruvienne?. Yeah the meaning is getting little pieces from part and part information, inspiration in little amounts and then making the connections... GLÂNER is perfect! And it puts the learner in the position of somebody putting the pieces of the jigsaw together bit by bit."

The article on teaching vs learning was revised by Catherine Forest last year. It's not so staightforward, in other languages, I think, as in English.
CE QUE APPRENDRE NE PEUT PAS ETRE
The English link:
What Teaching Never Can Be
Sandra Dodd, and others, on "Learning" vs. "Teaching"

Clarity

WORDSWORDS
Part of the series:
"Unschooling: Words and Thoughts
HOW CHANGING WHAT WE SAY
CAN CHANGE THE WAY WE THINK"

Natural learning: Simple?