You have all heard it before, but how many of us apply it? This whole theory of lifelong learning?
Last Saturday I mentioned an article by Tim Ferris called The Top 5 Reasons to Be a Jack of All Trades. The stuff he talks about is really sticking with me! I feel like there is one specific point that should be extracted that deals with education and lifelong learning.
The jack of all trades maximizes his number of peak experiences in life and learns to enjoy the pursuit of excellence unrelated to material gain, all while finding the few things he is truly uniquely suited to dominate.
The specialist who imprisons himself in self-inflicted one-dimensionality — pursuing and impossible perfection — spends decades stagnant or making imperceptible incremental improvements while the curious generalist consistently measures improvement in quantum leaps. It is only the latter who enjoys the process of pursuing excellence.
Out of those two paragraphs one half sentence sticks out more than the rest. “…finding the few things he is truly uniquely suited to dominate.”
There you have it folks! The point I have been trying to emphasis all along. We need to help our kids learn how to dominate their little area of the world. We need to give them confidence and hope. And we do this by helping them find what they are uniquely suited to do.
My idea is to make learning as broad as possible by offering as many subjects as possible, especially during the teenage years. Once kids latch onto something they love and enjoy they should be encouraged to follow it deeper. This is the best way to make productive members of society.
Instilling a love of learning is the first step and greatest task, and I believe it begins with our environment…
We must create a true learning culture.
With the advent of the information age I think we are well on our way. Never before has a tool for learning been so powerful as the internet. But we have yet to harness its potential for learning. It is only now beginning…
It is amazing how one things leads to another. Education week has been really fun and thought provoking. Thank you all for your comments and participating in the discussion. This whole week has provided a spring board for leaping into deeper discussions on more specific topics in education. Below you will find a good resource for delving deeper into educational policy. But please subscribe and continue to check back as I will be writing deeper and lengthier articles on some of these ideas.
Cheers,
Jeremy
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