What is learning?
Learning is something that most people do everyday of their lives, whether it be learning a new way to make a new dish at home or simply learning the basics such as how to get to a new location. However, for children that are in school, the first concept of leaning is knowing how to learn. This may seem as though this is something that should come natural. But, for many people the act of learning is something that they have to learn, otherwise they simply listen to the information and never really absorb it. Learning is not just memorizing facts and being able to call them up at any point in time, learning is being able to use what you know to apply it to your life and everyday situations. In essence, we could say that learning is really being able to use what you know and make it to where other people are going to understand it. So how can you learn to learn?
First off, consider the typical college scenario, the student sits in their seat, they take notes, they highlight, they stare at the board and they repeat. Are they learning? Not really, yes, they have the tools that they need to learn the information, but they must apply the information. This means asking questions that are going to make the person think about what it is that they are 'learning'. For example, if the student is learning about the ethical theory of deontology, being able to learn this theory means being able to apply this theory to their life. What issues in their life are those that can be related to deontology? How would a deontologist view issues such as assisted suicide or the death penalty?
With that being said, the teacher that is teaching these students is one of the primary ways in which the student can actually learn the material and learn how to learn. Through asking questions, the teacher is going to put into the students mind that this is how you really learn about something. You can sit and read about the facts and memorize them, but you never really fully understand the concept until you can relate it to something in the world.
Is learning to learn a challenge for many students? It does take some time to get used to. Too many children are brought up in the school systems thinking that being able to regurgitate the information is enough, when they really need to have an in-depth thinking approach to the information in order to really learn it. Luckily, more and more teachers are seeing the error of their ways and the younger students in the world are starting to get some of this complex thinking skills put to use. The person needs to realize that if they are older, they can still learn how to learn and apply this to their life. They will find that once they do this, that learning things take on a whole new role in their life and it can lead to an overall better, high quality life.