The Complete Lifelong Learning

Michael Simmons has helped me, at least, understand the full notion of Lifelong Learning (LL).

There is the absolutely critical LL associated with everyone’s career. The rapid evolution of knowledge and skills in all fields, indeed the reshaping if not replacing of jobs, demands LL!

But what this posting has helped me understand better is the equally important LL that enable time for addressing curiosity and enabling creativity — the time to expand and improve our capabilities to contribute to both our careers and personal lives. We must have the slack time to enable this. And I was so pleased to see that discussion is so critical to these efforts.

Back when ‘dirt was clear — so long ago it wasn’t dirty yet’, I worked in industry. We were expected to spend 20% of our time on ‘overhead’ long before Genius Time had been coined. When the business leadership replaced the engineering leadership, this ceased as an expected activity — granted only for specific, narrowly defined efforts. I and others thought then and this posting confirms for me it was a bad decision…

As as Emeritus professor, I find this posting confirms the importance of open-ended efforts, student control, group projects, eliminating grades and textbooks, … All of these changes, along with facilitation of Effective Learning and problem solving skills development, makes both types of LL possible and meaningful.