Learning, Old and New Stories

There comes a time when we realize that learning isn’t what we were taught it was. Most of us were not even taught in a way that we learned and some of us have even gone on to teach (and parent and manage) the way we were taught… all because we didn’t learn, really learn, what learning actually is.What were we learning?We were learning how to sit in a seat and how to behave in a classroom, how to gain approval, how to achieve (or not), how to compete, how to navigate the system, and, sure, some subject-specific “facts” along the way.But what we weren’t taught enough of is about the natural process of learning and growing, about ourselves, such as how we process information or how to creatively explore our passions. We weren’t taught how to question everything (even our own beliefs), how to think and feel for ourselves or how to cooperate to create a new world, a new way.We certainly weren’t taught how to relax.But when we pause to reflect and remember, we all know what learning is. We always have.Can you remember a time in childhood when your curiosity led you to immerse in a process, fully and completely, all senses engaged, and time passed without thought of anything else in the world other than those related to what you were experiencing? Or maybe you can remember a moment, perhaps quite recently, when you learned that learning is something entirely different than what you thought it was. All of a sudden, A huh, the light is on and everything looks and feels different, yet somehow so familiar…Perhaps you have always taken a different approach, your own approach, a more intuitive approach, to learning…What is your story of learning? We invite you to comment below or submit your full stories to EnlightenEd.Org@gmail.com.