Perspectives on Natural Learning

[Chris Enock]

Nature has done an amazing job of giving us the ability to learn. We need to look closely at our natural learning abilities in order to create better school experiences for the next generation of learners.

A good way to begin thinking about how we are naturally built for learning is to look at how we learn to walk and talk. We naturally develop these complex skills from a starting point of zero ability as infants. This learning is done without any particularly special support, no classes on walking or talking required! We do it on our own in the context of the normal daily structure of our young lives. Amazing.  

What makes this possible? From birth we are innately driven to interact with others. We want to assimilate into the world around us. We want to self actualize. And we are born with powerful skills of observation, and with the ability to practice doing something until it is mastered. These are basic ingredients of learning that we all have built in, and they are relentlessly at work throughout our lives.  

As children, these ingredients are in full swing when we are playing. "Play" is any self-directed, self-motivated activity we engage in where our powers of observation and practice are engaged. This could be looking at a book, the TV, other media, physical activities and games, discussions and interactions, pretty much anything. 

When we practice a skill during play, there is potent learning that occurs because our internal motivations and emotions are working synergistically with our other learning abilities. Simple. When we are motivated, we do well. 

In addition, as we engage in these self directed activities, we are also learning about evaluating circumstances and deciding WHAT to engage in. We are learning about balancing the external needs and demands of the world while acting on our own personal needs and wants as individuals. Powerful stuff. 

As we get older, we continue to naturally learn through play. It just looks a little different as we mature. As we grow and enter our teen years we call these teen-aged play activities socializing. Socializing, peer interaction as a context for learning, relies on the same synergistic learning ingredients as play, its really just a more grown up version with an all important focus on learning who we are and where we fit in the world while we acquire knowledge. 

Unlike current school and classroom learning experiences, these natural  experiences are seen by the young person as authentic. Because they are social, and fluid, and dynamic, and tied to personal motivations, these experiences feel like the real world. This means the learning activity conforms to ones sense of reality and is seen as worthy of putting trust in and therefore to learn deeply from. People feel more happy and satisfied when in a state that they feel is authentic. 

As we further mature and begin to enter the adult world, mentoring becomes an important social mode of learning. As young adults a special interest is taken in more experienced people in order to learn from them. As teens step out into the adult world for direct engagement with it, they can relate to an adult in a way where they start to see themselves in the adults shoes, doing what they do. 

As we become active adults, learning continues in much the same way. In a social, real world context. Just as information technology has today made a more rapid, organic learning mode more possible for everyone. Based on the picture being painted of our natural way of learning, we need to similarly adjust our learning experiences in schools into more authentic ones. Our drive for interaction, assimilation, actualization. Our utilization of our observation and practice skills. can best be used to develop ourselves while engaging in self-directed, fluid realistic experiences.  

I've gotten a lot of confirmation and inspiration from the Sudbury Valley School.