As I look around and ahead into the future, I believe that life long learning is no longer an optional orientation if one wants to remain employable, let alone successful.
In prior generations, the expectation for the middle class was: 1) Go to college and get a degree 2) Enter the professional world 3) Advance through hard work and success in your career area. 4) You could move further up by becoming a manager 5) If you didn’t have an MBA, get one and continue to grow in your career area, and 6) retire. Besides a few corporate classes, often the program of the year, ongoing education was not necessary.
The world today, however, requires a different approach. Jobs, and the skills they require are coming into existence, changing, and disappearing at increasingly faster rates. This will require workers, both white collar and blue collar, to continue their education throughout their professional lives. Whether it is to retrain to different fields or to update the ever changing skill sets, life long learning has become a professional necessity.
But how are we preparing ourselves, our students, and our current workforce for life long learning. One thing has become clear to me as I look around. We need to teach “how to learn” to our students; every student. This is now a basic life skill. Without it, students stumble and fumble along. Some pick up habits by experience or watching others. A few pursue learning strategies on “how to learn” on their own. But the vast majority of students I come in contact with at the post-secondary level, do not have a clear understanding of how to learn effectively and efficiently. They don’t know why they do (or we require them to do) many of the things they do. And they are not really aware of many small facets and strategies for improving their learning process.
We can bemoan the situation, point fingers, or ignore the situation. Personally, I believe one of the most valuable things we can teach the students that enter our classes is “how to learn.” It does not matter what the field or subject is, the age or background of the student, or the level of education that has been achieved. If we teach them from where they are at, then teaching “how to learn” is invaluable. It will help, not only in the class at hand, but for their entire lives and the many classes, subjects, topics and areas they pursue.
Besides teaching these skills to my Economics and Personal Finance students, I will be publishing posts on “how to learn” skills on Explorations with Prof E.
What do you teach your students in this area?
