Learning is always in the doing…

Emil, one of the fundamental problems you’re nibbling around in your post (Stop Learning) is the continuing conflation of education with learning. These are not the same things.

Learning is the enduring behavior change that results from doing, not the acquisition of knowledge, degrees and credentials. There are many knowledgeable idiots with credentials that can’t do a damn thing. And education (from primary school to formal higher learning in particular) continues to suffer by preferring and valuing these affectations instead of imposing deliberate, active practices that produce progressive, direct experience.

It is the deliberate, progressive practice that produces learning in every art, science, and sport under the sun. And many call the result of such learning mastery.

Talk with masters that actually do things well. I’ve found they refer more to learning as not the acquisition of mental knowledge or information – it was NOT their accumulation of facts and things that mattered – but rather their experiences that eliminated common obstructions, such as contextual ignorance, divided attention and recurring insecurities and doubts about continuing on that prevented them from achieving a liberated state of flow.

Let’s grant more active, experiential learning a place of value in society and cut back on trading away a rich life of diverse experiences for merely expensive educations that yield carpal tunnel syndrome. We all started out as children tinkering around widely on a natural learning path of mastery in what interested us most … and then, for many of us, a less-enlightened formal education got in the way.

More’s the pity…