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Active Learning

By Peter Lloyd

At a commencement, I was struck by a clever quip from the keynote speaker. She urged her graduates to remain learners rather than learned. Her point went by quickly, because she had much more to talk about, but I believe an important lesson in creativity lies in the distinction between these two words.

The adjective learned, meaning scholarly (as opposed to the verb learned, past tense of learn), describes someone known for what they know. It’s the static aspect of this word that the commencement speaker meant to discourage. Learning is a lot like breathing—continually taking in and letting out. Inhale. Exhale. When you stop breathing, you die. When you stop learning, you might as well.

When you breathe, you inhale whatever happens to be under your nose, absorb the oxygen and send back the carbon dioxide. To learn, you watch, listen, read, or experience. Then you extract what you need and reject what you don’t. As much a process as breathing, learning requires your participation. In and out. Conscious or unconscious, there’s nothing passive about it.

In active learning, the learner takes responsibility for mental respiration. Educators have developed techniques such as debate, class discussions, and role-playing to facilitate active learning. But who needs techniques? I find that creative people prefer not to be spoon-fed passively. Likewise they refuse to let what they learn lie fallow. Creative people constantly question while learning, challenge what they doubt, and reevaluate what they have learned.

Caught up as we are in a culture that demands and rewards knowledge, the temptation to accumulate information can seduce. So beware, change is just as constant as accumulation is rewarding. In ancient times up to not so long ago, a few of the learned could wrap their minds around all that was known. An inconceivable feat today. Never has what we know been so amendable. Every day I read of former facts relegated to the trash heap of what we used to think true.

The learned of today, those satisfied with what they know, will be irrelevant tomorrow, unless they become learners—those who keep their learning alive by breathing new life into what they think they know.

I know I never want to be learned. It would be too much like life support, when I can no longer breathe on my own and they have to give me oxygen. That’s not where I want to be. And why I plan to remain a learner as long as I can breathe.

Peter Lloyd is co-creator with Stephen Grossman of Animal Crackers, the breakthrough problem-solving tool designed to crack your toughest problems.