We need to learn how to learn

February 2, 2011By A. Gaffar Peang-Meth
PACIFIC DAILY NEWS

I learn from the words and wisdom of people who have walked paths I have never experienced. As a reminder to myself, I have tacked a note near my home workstation: "Don't compare your life with others.' You have no idea what their journey is all about."

The great Chinese teacher Confucius said if you want product in a year, grow grain; in 10 years, grow trees; in 100 years, grow people. Educate them to become intellectually and socially able citizens to play roles in society, the economy and the government to propel the country forward and better humankind.

Able citizens are the central core that moves a country forward. In a democracy, leaders are drawn from the citizenry. A French founding father of the European Union, Jean Monnet, said, "Nothing is possible without men; nothing is lasting without institutions."

So grow the best of men and women. They will have the capacity to create institutions that are lasting.

Learning

Life is learning; there's no avoiding it. We learn from others. William Shakespeare said, "We cannot all be masters." We learn, we love, we loathe, we build, we destroy.

"It is easy to hate and it is difficult to love. ... All good things are difficult to achieve; and bad things are very easy to get," Confucius taught.

Thinkers and philosophers preach the practice of high principles and beliefs that guide action or inaction: love, don't hate; build, don't destroy; be compassionate, don't demonize.

Learn, then apply. Or not. American futurist Alvin Toffler is blunt: "The illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn."

Change is hard

No person learns anything if he or she doesn't want to do so. Yet, what there is to learn is limitless; today's computer keyboard helps bring information to us with very little effort. But information must be sorted, evaluated and synthesized. One must learn how to exercise these attributes.

Still, as creatures of habit, humans are best at reproductive thinking, self-piloted, fossilized responses, which require no thought. Happy this way? Why change?

Change is hard. It requires new thoughts, new ideas. It doesn't always bring good things. Change begets change-- anathema to a feeling of comfort and security in the old and the familiar.

Hungarian-born American psychiatry professor Thomas S. Szasz wrote: "Every act of conscious learning requires the willingness to suffer an injury to one's self-esteem. That is why young children, before they are aware of their own self-importance, learn so easily."

With the proverb, "Pride comes before a fall," thinkers and philosophers preach humility as the foundation to all virtues -- to make a right estimate of one's self.

Medievalist and academic Clive S. Lewis, whose works have been translated into more than 30 languages, wrote: "A proud man is always looking down on things and people; and, of course, as long as you're looking down, you can't see something that's above you."

Learn to learn

In December 2006, I suggested in this space a New Year's resolution, "Learning to Keep Learning," based on the New York Times award-winner Thomas Friedman's observation that "creativity and innovation" by "people who can imagine things that have never been available before ... will capture people's imagination and become indispensable for millions."

He posited that the nations that flourish most are those that "develop the best broad-based education system, to have the most people doing and designing the most things we can't even imagine today." In Friedman's words, "the constant ability to learn how to learn" is the "only security you have."

I often write that what we know is less important than how we think. Better thinking can be taught and learned -- to think creatively, to generate something new from nothing; and critically, to probe to understand, to compare to obtain more options, and to select the best.

Learning from others

As an educator, I have shared a comment by former Chinese Communist boss Deng Xiaoping, who is credited for having pulled China out of centuries of backwardness, poverty and stagnation, putting her on the road to spectacular development and modernization: "It doesn't matter if it is a black cat or a white cat. ... As long as it can catch mice, it's a good cat."

Did you hear reports that those who built the technology behind China's J-20 stealth fighter may have "copied " parts from a a U.S. F-117 stealth jet shot down over Kosowo in 1999?

Tiny Singapore is an economic powerhouse, with one of the world's highest per-capita incomes, high-quality schools, great health care and public services. It's a fascinating place. Beijing's cabinet ministers met twice yearly with their Singaporean counterparts to study the Singaporean experience; 50 mayors of Chinese cities visited Singapore every three months "for courses in city management."

And Singaporeans, too, learned from others. Peter Ho, head of the Civil Service, said in a 2008 speech: "We study best practices everywhere. We copy, but not blindly, and we constantly adapt" and "continually (seek) to adapt global best practices to the local context."

Lee Kuan Yew said Singapore's secret to success lies in being "ideology free" through "unsentimental pragmatism" -- "Let's try it and if it does work, fine, let's continue it. If it doesn't work, toss it out, try another one."

A. Gaffar Peang-Meth, Ph.D., is retired from the University of Guam. Write him at peangmeth@yahoo.com.