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Add to FavoritesLearning skills are acquired mainly from books. There ought to be a distinction made from the start between skills and learning. Learning to read English, for example, involves the acquisition of skills related to reading English. Staying with "English" as key to learning in English, having learned to read English well permits any reader with the skills of expert reader in English with learning sets of skills to be found by a skilled reader in almost any book, manual, or print media, that instructs one in the learning of sets of skills that are available to a reader at different levels of comprehension. These sets of skills make it possible for some people to progress from the acquisition of a few basic skills to mastery of more complex skills.
Having reinforced the proposition that learning skills are acquired mainly from books, let us examine how one learns, per se. What follows is not a textbook version of how one learns skills by reading. As everyone is prepared to argue that we all learn how to do things by trial and error, it is also true that this is only possible up to a point. Many of us quit long before we solve a problem that we had thought, on first observation, quite easy to solve.
Thus our skills are learned by trial and error. We add to the time needed to solve a problem when we repeat unknowingly repeat an error simply because it seems obvious to us that a decision we made to do something one-way was natural. The fact may be that we needed to use an entirely different approach to a solution. While there are alternative solutions to a problem, there are degrees of efficiency in the solutions we come up with. That is why, when we decide to assemble a desk in a box, for example, we are left with extra pieces. Had we read the directions that come with the piece, we might have save some time even if these "directions" are not always as helpful as they purport to be because of someone at the other end having difficulty with the English language. We of course, by and large, do not read Chinese.
Well, reading "how to" directions that come with anything we need to assemble for it to acquire its functionality is one thing, but it's not the same as what is required to read a book. That is true, but books are germane to the complexity of the task or project and goal. Some necessary "how to" instruction is short. Some "how to" instruction is long. It's that simple.
Anyone who buys into the premise as explained above agrees with the thesis that learning skills are acquired mainly from books. Anyone who disagrees does not. The latter will argue that the distinction between learning skills and any other job, let us say, occupational skills, are independent from each other.
It may be that we are really talking about formal learning versus informal reading. Lincoln learned law by reading law books. He probably learned to be a lawyer by watching lawyers practicing law. The reader might see where this argument is going. The Great Impostor learned how to be a doctor in the Canadian Navy when he was at sea and had to perform an emergency appendectomy. He took a few minutes to read it in a book that he found in the surgical unit.
Learn more about this author, Gerard Coulombe.
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When was the last time you read a self help book or any book for that manner, then lived exactly what it said? I'm guessing never, right? How about the last time you viewed an infomercial and were compelled to action by it's promises? Are you quicker to believe something you read or something you saw on you tube? The odds are you were driven to action quicker by the infomercial, the odds are you believe what you see as well.
I do not deny that books have a certain power to enliven the mind when we read stories we can imagine the story play out in the mind and sometimes we feel it with emotion. You read a text book and identify concepts, but these don't morph strait into our being. However, repetitive reading can begin to sink into the mind and create learning and knowledge, or what some would call book smarts. But book smarts will only get you so far in gaining a new skill. If only it were that easy a lot more people would read and desire literacy. Millions of illiterate people live in America, and these people have significant skill levels some even greater than the book smart individual. Why? because they learned by experinces, hard and fast.
The college education I received spoke volumes to me about the failings of the education system in general. Testing in college was identical to my prior education. Read a few pages and answer a few questions and guess what if you did this homework you would pass the class even if you messed up on tests. College felt too much like a pyramid scheme where they were more interested in your money than your future. In fact I can remember at least three or four classes that I was counseled to enrolled in that counted towards nada in my degree. In essence I was misled to take these classes which meant extended time at the school as well as a waste of money on classes I didn't need. This left me jaded, I paid for a service and got crappy advice. I am not completely against the education system because hey I did survive with a degree.
Our current education system is unchallenging at best. Math classes teach concepts that will never be applied again, unless of course you seek a engineering degree. It is no wonder teens today aren't like the students of yesteryear, they are bored and tired of being taken advantage of. Student every where recognize that they are pawns that make money for their schools, and it is based upon the student's performance rather than the quality of the lesson the teacher gives. Teachers last at best a few years in the profession because they are all too busy teaching to the tests, rather than to the students. Teachers are also allowed virtualluy no creativity because everything is standardized. There is no time for teachers to experiment upon the concepts that the students are reading about. This is the biggest diservice being dealt to student's in America's schools.
Genuine learning and growth comes when projects are introduced, projects that solidify a concept from a book. If children in school were able to learn by being mentally, and physically challenged though project based learning we would have a complete paradigm shift in the level of skills our children, high school graduates, and our degree carrying member of society carry with them.
The quickest way to learn about dating isn't about reading a dating book it is simply dating. Books serve as a catalyst to seek a new skill that without the book you may never have been introduced too, but simply studying a book will not give you the skill. Reading pages of notations by Mozart will not make me able to play his songs. Only the practice of an instrument accompanied by the study of his music will.
Learning skills are acquired mainly by living life. By actively engaging in it, and maintaining a child like interest in others, and in things around you. Books have a purpose to present our minds with things unthought-of. But no book can give us a skill. We must choose to apply what we read to gain skill in it. Experiment upon the words of a book, and work on it in your life, then will a new skill become usable to you.
Learn more about this author, Jesse Hunt.
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