The Growth of a Learning Individual

Aristotle once said “Educating the mind without educating the heart is no education at all” and this still rings true today. Often times when educators attempt to teach a subject to a student, all that they end up teaching is how to memorize and regurgitate information. No real growth is happening when this occurs.

It creates a cycle that student’s master, where they memorize, write the test, forget and repeat. It is counterproductive for personal growth. Student’s cannot further themselves if the education they are supposed to be learning is lost within a month of not practicing it.
It must be instilled into them for it to really have an impact. Instead of attempting to just train students to pass exams, educators can teach students how to put the information they are being taught to use. As opposed to putting it to use in the classroom, an educator can demonstrate the benefits of that work outside of the classroom. The idea is to get the student to put their information to use outside of the class time, as well as to get the students to attempt to teach it to each other.

Essentially, if the student can “play” with the information, then they are more likely to use it to grow personally as well as academically. I personally experienced this cycle of picking up information for a test, and then simply dumping all of it, once the test was over. I never truly learned anything. It wasn’t until post-secondary, where professors didn’t mandate a certain style of learning that I truly began to flourish. Although, when it came time for post-secondary education, as an adult, I was unprepared and initially overwhelmed. I’ve witnessed this lack of preparedness in my peers. When they go to start their lives away from home, all the “skills” that were taught to them in high school, have no place in the “real world” which in turn leaves them scrambling to grow into the adult they were supposed to be, before they entered the real world. 

In high school, they constantly remind you that, you are to be treated as an adult, and to behave as an adult. But they fail to address the issues, or hurdles that an individual will run into as an adult. So in order to reach success, a change in learning styles must occur.  I’ve witnessed these changes in learning styles in my peers as well. 

The beginning of the integration of technology into the classrooms has also played a very large role in progressing as a student. The integration of technology allows the students to take hold of their own learning. It allows them to learn at the pace that is best for them, as well as having all the benefits of having a teacher there. It is a sort of hybrid between, online education, and a classroom style education. Allowing the student all of these opportunities to supplement their learning, they are more likely to absorb most, if not all the information that is being given to them. 

There is no longer a need to follow a “cookie-cutter” outline for the fast track to a successful academic career.  I believe that it is better to put the student in charge of the way they are learning, as opposed to imposing a certain learning style of a group of kids. By putting students in charge of their learning from a young age, they will already know what works best for them, so when they enter post secondary, they already have an effective way to study and learn. This is especially important during post-secondary education, where their knowledge will be put directly to work once they enter their desired career. In essence, if the student never master’s how to supplement their personal growth, with their academic growth, they will enter the “real world” unprepared.

This is a video of students explaining how their learning has progressed by learning in their own ways.