Enhancing learning should be a lifelong process

By Iwan Pranoto

BANDUNG (JP): The word learning is almost always used in reference to activities in formal education, from kindergarten to university level. Rarely is it related with something people outside school or universities do. Even in classrooms, until 30 years to 40 years after World War II, teachers were only equipped with the theory of teaching, instead of theory of learning.

But this is changing now. Some members of the middle class have now developed hobbies relating to learning, and it has become a valued activity of leisure for young and old. For example, some study seriously about flowers, aerodynamics of model aircraft and even learn aspects very remote from their day- to-day professions. Learning has become a part of recreation, and people are willing to spend money on its pursuit.

In this modern society, mature people are viewed as human beings who need to learn continuously to be able to develop themselves. For instance, a manager of the quality assurance department of a high-tech industry wants to learn new statistics' techniques. He or she may feel that what they have learned in their final education is not enough to propel their career higher. It is one of the reasons some education experts argue that tertiary education should graduate lifetime learners, not ready-to-use graduates.

Every person has already had three main aspects of learning: ability, opportunity and motivation to learn. The only difference is the level one has but, through education, we improve these aspects. The first two can be improved by just doing the exercises presented to us. While improving the first two aspects is quite simplistic, it is not clear how to enhance motivation.

We know this aspect is critical in the learning improvement of mature people. Without it, we are unlikely to improve learning capability.

We can experiment with this learning aspect in mature people around us, e.g. our spouses or friends. For example, first, provide them with a novel each. It is better if the novel is not interesting to the person we evaluate. For instance, for someone who does not enjoy reading science fiction novels, give him or her a Michael Crichton work.

Then, instruct all of them simply to study their books. Do not say anything else. Observe how they use their time. After five minutes, ask them to close the books. And then ask each one of them to tell you the first word in the novel he or she studied.

Or you can ask where the corresponding stories in the novel took place. It is very likely they will not be able to answer the questions correctly.

Why? Can't the mature people answer the questions? After all, they do have both the ability and opportunity to learn. If we again ask them to study the novels, and then ask them the same questions as above, every one of them will almost certainly be able to answer them easily. Why? Why could those mature people complete the tasks on the second chance?

The answer is simply in the moment of learning. Those people did not reach the right moment of learning on the first chance. In contrast, on the second chance, the people did reach their moment of learning.

I observe that there are at least three components that may contribute to the reachability of their moment of learning. And, in reaching the moment, mature people and adolescents have totally different aspects.

First, adolescents only need to know that they must learn what their teachers say if they want to pass. In contrast, mature people need to know the goals why they need to learn before studying the subjects. In the experiment above, we observed that the mature people learned on the second instance because they knew the goals already.

Second, adolescents have dominant external motivators, e.g. values, teachers, parental pressure and others. They learn new subjects, because their teachers motivate them to do so. However, mature people are more driven by internal motivators, that is self-esteem, quality of life and improvement of job satisfaction. They learn something because they want to improve their career and they realize that they can do it if only they learn.

Third, adolescents are assumed to depend on their teachers. Primarily, they rely on their opportunity and ability to learn from their teachers. In contrast, mature people have a self- concept of being responsible for their own decisions. They are responsible for their own opportunity and ability to learn. They have to improve on their own.

Thus, we can see that mature people have totally different components affecting their moments of learning. One big problem of our tertiary education in the meantime is that we neglect these differences and see university students as adolescents, not mature people. We even very often view them as kids. We do not have confidence to let them learn by themselves. We are so afraid to see them fail.

We want everything to be so perfect that we could not provide them with permission to fail. If this situation goes on, our students cannot optimally improve their learning capability and our society will only consist of submissive listeners. The idea to have a generation of active and lifetime learners would be an illusion. If we are smart and able to learn from the mistakes of our previous era, we should begin to view our students as mature people.

The writer is a math lecturer at the Bandung Institute of Technology.