Deep & Durable Learning
Welcome to my very first blog post (and the related—but complementary—podcast)!
I want to use our first encounter to shed some light on what I mean by deep and durable learning. I also want to share my vision of where we’ll be heading in the days to come as I operationalize deep and durable learning for you.
Let’s start with what has probably been your experience with learning. It is tragically volatile!
Forgetting is far more likely than remembering. I remember being terrified at the end of the summer just before third grade with the possibility that my new teacher might expect that I actually remembered things from second grade!
One of the reasons for volatility is lack of applicability. Much of education feels like an accumulation of factual trivia with little bearing on life. “Relevant” facts are retained by brute force through incessant drill.
Deep learning is not esoteric nor is it elitist.
It is not the domain of eggheads. I call it deep because it requires significant engagement. It is not superficial. It is deep because it answers important questions. Really answers them as in it provides a “why” (or a “how”). Surely you know that 2 & 3 year-olds insist on this! We are wired to keep asking questions until we are satisfied that we understand. Understanding means that we know when and how to use the knowledge we’ve gained. The bonus is that we remember what we’ve learned because it “just makes sense.” Deep learning is intrinsically durable.
Deep learning requires “mental sweat.” Our culture recognizes the need for physical sweat for the health of our bodies: “no pain, no gain.” Most people don’t see the mental parallel. Deep learning is a wrestling with ideas in the quest to answer a question we care about. Wrestling means there is resistance. The pieces don’t fall into place all by themselves. As we explore ideas and the ways they connect with other ideas, we find many combinations that don’t lead anywhere. Persistence pays off, however, and eventually we find the missing puzzle piece. The full picture is so satisfying, and so powerful!
An exemplar of the fact that deep learning need not be esoteric is a personal friend who started his own HVAC business. He absolutely loved the problem-solving aspect of his work. To the detriment of his company’s bottom-line he relentlessly searched for a reason for the malfunction he was called to fix. He absolutely refused to just swap parts to see if the problem would go away. When he found a simple, inexpensive fix he found joy in explaining to the homeowner how straightforward the solution was. In short, his joy was multiplied by teaching the “how” and “why” to anyone who had the desire to follow his thinking.
As my HVAC friend aged and turned his company over to a business-savvy son, he semi-retired and was called on mainly to try to solve particularly difficult problems. One of these involved my furnace. Since I was his friend, one of the company’s best technicians was dispatched to my house. His verdict was that I needed a new control board. Unfortunately, when the new board was installed, the old problem was still there and a bunch of new problems to boot. The technician told me it was time for a new furnace. I confronted him with the fact that his work had made things worse, but he wouldn’t budge.
My semi-retired friend was called in. He methodically went through a logical analysis of what worked and what didn’t. After about 30 minutes he emerged and told me the problem was solved! It seems the new control board had been put in upside down (which would not have been obvious). That was five years-ago and the furnace is still working fine.
In the months ahead I will be leading you on a journey to help you discover and deploy the tools of learning. Chief among these is the ability to ask good questions. The right question can point you to gaps in your understanding. We answer questions by using powerful ideas (concepts). Perhaps you will discover that you have a vocabulary, but the vocabulary words reference poorly-fleshed-out ideas or even misunderstanding. There are few things more likely to end in failure than operating under a mis-conception!
This systematic conceptual approach to learning is at odds with the spirit of our age.
Everyone would agree that we live in the Information Age. Ask Siri or Alexa or Google the answer to any question and you’ll unleash an avalanche of information. Unfortunately, much information is misinformation and uncritically assimilating it can lead to a swamp of misunderstanding.
To sort truth from error, we need experts more than ever. Paradoxically we are more (unjustifiably) enamored with our own DIY approach than ever before. Rather than reasoning, we shop for prepackaged opinions voiced by others on the internet. We tend to land on opinions that echo in our own chosen silo and further confirm our biases.
“Not only do increasing numbers of laypeople lack basic knowledge, they reject fundamental rules of evidence and refuse to learn how to make a logical argument.”
Tom Nichols, The Death of Expertise, p. 2.
A good dose of intellectual humility is the right starting point for a learner. As Mark Twain is reputed to have said “we are all ignorant; just about different things.” In the months ahead I will help you learn how to make a logical argument and to respect the rules of evidence.
I hope you’ll join me on this journey!