Wise Up - the challenge of lifelong learning

Wise-up: The challenge of lifelong learning by Guy Claxton, Published by Allen & Unwin, RRP $35.00

Why do some people become better learners than others and how can societies and organizations help everyone develop their learning power?

These are big issues in English academic Guy Claxton’s exploration of the new science of learning.

Claxton, who wrote this work in NZ, is a contributor to the Times Educational Supplement. He is also visiting professor in psychology and education and director of the research programme on culture and learning in organizations at the University of Bristol.

He writes: The new age is irreversibly entrepreneurial. No longer does one train for a vocation or profession and confidently practice it until one retires.

“People have to be prepared to retrain perhaps several times over the course of their working lives and know how to go about knowing how to learn and solve complex problems”.

This wordy 374-page book is aimed at parents, educators and managers. The research covers infancy to the business world. Claxton dismisses the traditional idea of learning as memorisation as the belief learning is understanding.

He advocates an emphasis on the development of learning power by knowing when, who and what to do when dealing with a fresh experience – for example, a job interview.

He refers to a 1997 national survey commissioned by the British Industrial Society that revealed two-thirds of 16-25 year olds said school had not prepared them for life in the real world, while 60% of 16 year olds said they were “bored by” or “not interested” in school work.

Claxton believes the focus on intelligence as a major determinant of people’s learning has been an enormous hindrance to the development of a genuine learning culture. He explains learning is part of our nature with resilience, resourcefulness and reflectiveness the three Rs. Meanwhile, immersion, imagination, intellect and intuition comprise the four learning modes of the learning toolkit.

Mozart, for example, characterizes immersion: “as soon as he began to give himself to music, all his senses were as good as dead to other occupations”. Imagination is described as being evident in the systems that use mnemonic techniques relying on imagery for recall. Intellect is associated with learning language, including thinking. Intuition or soft thinking is seen in the creativity of the architect, the theatre director or psychotherapist, defined by the 19th century French mathematician Henri Poincare as “it is by logic we prove, but it is by intuition we discover”.

The section on the Age of Uncertainly explains that with a huge increase in the number and size of global corporations, and in the mobility of managing their capital, the world of work in 20 years’ time will be uncertain and for many uncomfortable. Importance will be placed on “how t learn new skills and knowledge, “not the “new skills and knowledge” themselves.

A solid read, peppered with number references to applicable research listed under each chapter at the end of the book, which would be more user friendly if each page were headed with the chapter.

© 2008 L Donald
all rights reserved
Appeared in The National Business Review