Lifelong Learning
Questioning and Answering Our World
Saturday morning, my husband and I wake up with the birds chirping in the yard. We go outside with our morning coffee and sit down in our swiveling patio chairs to listen. As we are welcoming the beautiful notes of nature, I ask my husband what bird he thinks is making this fantastic music. My husband goes onto the world wide web to listen to the various bird songs on Youtube. Blue jays? No. Mourning doves? No. Chickadees? No. Cardinal? Now that one sounds a lot like it. We turn up the volume to see what happens. After a few minutes, we are graced with the presence of the beautifully colored red cardinal. He seems to have taken an interest in the noises coming from the phone’s speaker. This cardinal then begins to sing his alluring song again and it is a match. While drinking our morning coffee, my husband and I learned something new — the sounds a male cardinal makes.
That morning’s exercise of questioning and answering has become something of a habit for us. Either he or I ask a question that comes up and then it is off to the races to see which one of us can find the answer first. This kind of practice categorizes us as lifelong learners. A lifelong learner is someone who asks questions and then goes the extra mile to answer it. They don’t just sit around wondering about the answer until another question comes along; they attack the question that is at hand. My husband and I are people who ask questions and then turn to our resources to find the answer. Lifelong learners believe that learning can happen at any moment of any day. They are the people who don’t depend on just themselves to know.
Lifelong learning is a habitual exercise. In order for someone to become a lifelong learner that person needs to have a driving desire to pursue the knowledge necessary to answer any questions that come his or her way. If a person gives up on questioning the world, they become stagnant with information and begin falling in line with the status quo. This is a common trend in our society. It is such a widely known thing that it has its own name — ‘fake news’. The reason for this ‘fake news’ is because people are beginning to believe everything that they read or hear, and the information they actively seek out only solidifies what they already believe from the limited resources they surround themselves with. This is an unfortunate phenomenon; people are seeking out the answers that they want to hear rather than proactively seeking out the truth.
As educators, it is our duty and responsibility to provide students the stamina necessary to become true lifelong learners and seek out the truth of all matters, regardless of the favorable or unfavorable answer. It is up to us as educators to teach students the power of questioning our surroundings and seeking out the truthful answers. As teachers and adults we need to imply on students that anytime is the right time for learning; it doesn’t just have to begin and end in the classroom. We must teach students to be curious and open minded to all things. And, it is up to us as educators to plant the seeds of lifelong learning in our practice then step back, and let the act of learning and growing come alive within each of our students.
