L.e.a.r.n.i.n..g...

April 17 2002 was my first day at my first job. I have completed 23 years of having a software programming job last week. I have been employed all along these 23 years pretty much. It has been a good run overall and I'm most refined now, than I have ever been. 

Was thinking about my work life and my life prior to when I was a student.

 

When I was in School and in Engineering college, I would be sitting in the class room during lectures. I realized then and I remember now - I didn't understand what they were talking - no matter what subject it was. Sometimes - I probably listened to the first 5 to 10 minutes may be, then got distracted to think about something else. I was just merely sitting there, but mentally I was far away thinking about something else. I wondered if everyone around me are just pretending to listen or even they are lost like me. At least they were good to pretend. I do not consider myself smart amongst my class mates. Just an ordinary student who will just make it through the exams. Over time - I have come a long way and even when in School, I realized I am good at reading myself and understanding. In fact all my exam preparations was fresh new reading from the books. I was appalled when reading it during the exam season - The lecturer who tutored us on that topic really didn't make it interesting even though the concepts I just read and found out wasn't that bad. So during exams, I just read 60-70% of it and also I wrote in my own words. I remember while writing in exams - I try to quote the book sentence and not satisfied with that explanation - I explain more in different way in the next sentence - so that its crystal clear. I always liked how I told it better than how the book explained it. It was my understanding that stood apart. Indian examiners expect everything to be quoted from books, and it is not a surprise I didn't score well in any exams. But I was always happy to "know" things from the book and had my own understanding on key technical topics. Programming was one such thing - I have been earning a living of that for the past 23 years. I am not super smart in programming - But I am very perfect on whatever I do in it. I have seen my colleagues who are not doing that. So the school and college didn't make any difference to my intellect. Whatever I learnt - I learnt it myself "outside" of the class room. The influence of any of the lecturers was not minimum, but zero in my case. That is a true statement.

 

Long back, the process of learning was to going to a Gurukul and staying with a Guru. The guru taught you everything and you stayed with him 24 hours - all day. You learn by close collaboration. If you wanted to cut hair for a living - you work for an established barber in the town. You see how he operates, he teaches you his approach, then gives you smaller tasks, then he allows you to experiment in his full view - corrects you, refines you and you stay with him for years to understand everything about the skills. After sufficient training - with his consent & blessings, you move on to do it yourself. This was kind of how it used to work for any profession. This method of a "learning" - we know works. The training is extensive and over a long period of time. It was a working model. The disadvantage being - only some people can be trained this way. The count is very less.

 

Modern School teaching - is a "mass learning". Instead of a personal trainer - the tutor will stand in front of a group of students mostly 50+ people will lecture the whole thing. It is up to the students to capture what all the lecturer says. From what I know - 80% of what was taught in school that day is forgotten by that evening. Words flew from the teachers mouth into the student's ears - only to be evaporated in the air. Learning needs re-enforcement of knowledge repeatedly over multiple days for the students to remember. A casual explanation - in whatever way isn't going to stick the intellectual knowledge to the listeners. Moreover not all students are captured by the same words. Each one needs to be told in a different manner, so that they get their head around that. Most often - the teachings are wrongly understood. One day i told my wife and daughter - Imagine there is a cow here in the living room. I gave them a minute to imagine and asked them to write down what they saw in their imagination. I wrote my own small list. We reviewed all our list afterwards. The color of the cow didn't match. Whether it was sitting or standing didn't match. What side its looking at didn't match. How big was the animal didn't match. Turns out - all three people were imagining completely different things even though we are attempting the same thought. This happens every day all day - even on brand new topics. Just as the first step gone wrong- anything that follows goes bizarre there after. The new learning doesn't happen - most of the time. Say a tutor teaches programming to a set of students - it turns out, the student is hearing that for the first time. It is absolutely important that he absorbs the basics right - without fear of it and with clarity. Usually if the first learning scares the student out - and he is unable to recover for years. Many Engineering graduates are afraid of programming - because it was not introduced to them in an interesting way. They create a permanent fear in their mind and unable to sustain in jobs that need  hi-tech engineering and mathematical skills. Fear is the baseline how schools and colleges operate. Only with the fear they can control 50+ students. You talk in class - you meet the principal. You score less marks in exams - you are asked to bring your parents to meet the teachers. The whole thing operates by creating fear in the minds of the students. With fear - no learning can happen in its true sense.

 

The tutoring itself is second-hand knowledge. The teacher needs to understand the book and explain to the students. The student gets "second hand" information first - usually its half-baked, badly explained, includes missing information, uninteresting and vague. Because it is second hand information - it cannot be articulated well enough. Also people who end up as teachers are those who didn't succeed in getting real-world jobs. The only use value of their acquired knowledge is to teach it to another student. It doesn't trigger curiosity. A good lecture must create curiosity amongst the listeners - even days/years later.

 

I read books and I often repeat them particularly the ones that deal with trading. When I repeat my books - I realize that the first time I read a book - I become aware. The next time I read - I begin to understand. The next time I read - is where I truly learn. Being merely aware is not enough. It might help with written exams in schools - but really the intention is to truly learn. A job really needs true learning. A lot of people manage by just being aware. In those cases - expertise is acquired by repetition rather than real understanding. This takes longer in time.

 

True learning is to know the unknown (you didn't experience it before), be aware of it consciously and then allow the understanding to percolate to the unconscious/subconscious, in the process become a newer version of yourself and operate at a different level. This can be articulated while we learn a new skill that we didn't know already like - swimming, driving an automobile or trading. The very first time, you were learning swimming., you go into the pool and at every second you are conscious not to drown, stay above, breath as needed and put an effort to float, move your arms & legs. You are always afraid of drowning. As you practice more - you do the same thing, not consciously but unconsciously. Similarly while driving for the first time - you are always watching around for vehicles, seeing the side mirrors and vigilant all the time. As you drive more and more, those things happen at the unconscious level. This is true learning. It is not that the dangers don't exist anymore but you are able to deal with them with ease. You have become a different person - to encounter the new changes overcoming the fear which you used to have. 

 

When you repeat the books, the learning introduces you to the new things. It is not they didn't exist when you read it the first time, it was there all along. Actually you have become refined and you are able to absorb the information because you have refined/changed yourself since the time you first read it.

 

Class room teaching is successful in making more graduates but it hardly does anything in the area of true working knowledge. It is often left to the student to DO the learning after he leaves college. He usually does it himself at home. Resulting in continuous learning to be contributing at work. In most cases - it takes YEARS to learn enough to contribute in real work. It takes more time than the Gurukul set-up. Sometime the learning that didn't happen during the school happens all through life, and in most cases - the learning never happens. We see graduates in accounts - not knowing anything about accounting. We see graduates in science - doing an insurance sales job. Those people lost valuable years, by sitting in class rooms.

 

I believe - the current way of "learning" through schools and colleges has had disastrous results. More people are unemployed and unemployable after exiting that system. Some people become successful still, in this kind of set-up - that is not because of the system but in spite of the system. The whole set-up needs to be revamped. There are smart parents who have already figured out this and put their children in home schooling. At least their learning is first-hand and has more probability to succeed. Education, as is currently practiced, is not the answer to all problems. It's critical thinking and self learning. Critical thinking is needed at the individual level. Only that can liberate the self. Only by the liberation of the self, can the society be changed.