My Mission Statement: Learning How to Learn - The Importance of Understanding and Wisdom in Education

I have always been a student. As a student, I have learned the hard lesson that education is not primarily about learning a subject. In the beginning of my quest for understanding, I thought that I studied history to know what happened in the past – that in mathematics I learned to compute for the sake of economy and wise spending financially. While these were among the products of my education, I quickly realized that this was a secondary achievement: the real reason for pursuing any subject is to learn how to learn. Accepting that we must learn how to learn is the beginning of wisdom. One definition from Merriam-Webster about wisdom states that it is the ability to discern inner qualities and relationships. What is learning, if it is not the mental construction of different experiences and beliefs into a worldview? History isn’t about what happened long ago: it’s about what’s happening now, applying what we know from then to what is transpiring in the world today. Mathematics is not about computing and budgeting: it is about learning to understand a thing without using the physical senses – about seeing with the mind’s eye. These are the real products if a fruitful education. There is no denying the interconnectedness of history and current events or the direct relationship of mathematics to the organization of our minds. My purpose as a person is to teach others the necessary skills and practices which bring about this kind of reasoning. Steven Covey, writer of the book The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, thought so highly about the necessity to gain understanding that his fifth habit was to seek first to understand, then to be understood. Thinking critically about how and why we learn, and by extension embracing wisdom and understanding, requires a dedication and perseverance that may not be easy for some to give. You have to ask yourself the hard questions. To learn how to learn, you must be endlessly curious, preternaturally bold and abundantly hopeful. I am all of these things. Can you be?