Raising Learners, Part 1: Responsibility
The first in our “7 Laws of Learning” is the principle of responsibility. This can also be expressed as desire or motivation. It means that the student must have a motive for learning. The motive might not be a sense of responsibility for every learner, but students have a calling that includes the responsibility to learn.
For younger students in the grammar stage, we suggest a rule something like this: “Your job is to learn new things.” This could lead to an argument from a resistant student who says, “You’re telling me things that I already know.” So the meaning of this rule includes a process where the student must patiently review old things while listening, looking, or reading for things that are new.
For older students in the logic or rhetoric stages, we suggest a more articulate way to express the rule. “Approach the learning task with a desire to know and understand more than you currently do.” It contains the same basic content, but touches on that other part of the work more explicitly. The student must somehow figure out what he* currently knows, and identify his opportunities to learn something new.
Certain problems can arise that work against a sense of responsibility. A student may feel coerced into learning. This can happen when a student is expected to start at a new school. Social anxieties, feelings of past failure, or anxieties about expectations and outcomes can overwhelm the student. It might seem that such influences should increase the student’s sense of responsibility, but under an overload of emotional distraction, the student may find that the task of learning is too much to handle.
Sometimes the sense of responsibility finds an obstacle in comfortable social relationships. Less responsible peers or friends may absolve the student for inadequate efforts, providing distractions that require less work and promise more pleasure. Authorities in the student’s life such as adult relatives or older siblings may render opinions on the subject that degrade its value in the student’s eyes. “I had to study that in school, and it did me no good at all. It’s a mystery why they still make you learn it.” Even an envious remark like, “That sounds hard. I never had to do that in school,” can demotivate a student from the serious responsibility of his calling.
A serious student at any age should take some time periodically to consider why he wants to learn. Several reasons are possible. These are not exhaustive, nor numbered in any particular order, but the student could sort them into his own order of priority.
Learning is his job. This is true for every student.
Learning is enjoyable. We are tempted to use the word “fun,” but learning provides a different kind of enjoyment than the fun of playing at any age.
Learning something is an achievement.
Learning something worthwhile adds to a person’s abilities.
Learning makes a person’s understanding of the world more accurate.
Learning exercises the mind. Without it, the mind grows dull and weak.
Some kinds of learning also exercise the body, adding strength, endurance, and a resistance to aging.
Learning to identify bad things can help a person avoid harm for himself and for others.
Learning and appropriating good things is its own reward, and makes a person into a clearer reflection of God’s image.
Learning helps a person better to tell the difference between something true and something false, lending some freedom from ignorance and from deception by others.
Learning beautiful things adds beauty to a person’s life, and increases his abilities to discern and appreciate beauty.
A person who has learned much can acquire the respect of others for such diligence and for the knowledge gained.
Perhaps the reader will think of many other motivations to learn. If you do, please visit our church and school, so that you can share them with us.
*We use the masculine singular pronoun here in the classical gender-indefinite sense, where it denotes either male or female persons. This, in the author’s view, is the most elegant solution. Repeating a phrase like “he or she” is both awkward and unwieldy. Attempting a compromise like “s/he” or using the plural “they” runs against the natural grammar of our language. Switching back and forth between “he” and “she” creates confusion. Unfortunately, the gender-indefinite use of masculine singular pronouns must sometimes be re-taught because it has fallen into widespread disuse, probably due to the misunderstanding that it favors male antecedents. Our solution is to correct the misunderstanding.