I grew up in a devout Sikh household and from the time I was old enough to repeat words, I was taught that the definition of a Sikh was "one who learns."
That, my grandmother always said, was to be our life ideal, our ultimate aspiration. As human beings, that was our fundamental duty--to keep on learning.
When you stopped learning and questioning and thinking and improving and becoming, you ceased being a Sikh.
That's a great ideal to have, whether or not you are a follower of Sikhism.
Learning helps us improve on who we are now. Continuous learning is continuous improvement, a neverending cycle of reinvention and upgrading that keeps transforming us. Thus, we evolve.
The ability to learn is:
Learning helps us problem-solve and make decisions that are educated and pertinent. However, education and learning are not necessarily or always the same thing:
“Education is what people do to you. Learning is what you do for yourself”
Education is formal, driven by external forces, tied to a curriculum and a generalist agenda (a certificate, a diploma, an undergraduate or post-graduate degree) and it is "taught" by experts. It is thus given to you within the ambit of some clear rules of engagement and tested against a standardised syllabus within a specific scope of time and with expected "credit" or accreditation.
Learning is often informal and internally driven to satisfy a curiosity or a desire to know something. It is an active and subjective process in which I take control of the knowledge gathering process. I can learn anything, anywhere, from anyone at any time and by any means or methods I choose.
In fact, we human beings are natural, curious, exploratory, intrinsically motivated, constructive learners and a large chunk of our learning happens outside of our formal education, from life and work and all the things we see and experience.
Even more fundamentally, learning is a survival skill. It helps us change and adapt according to the constantly changing world around us. It helps us gain control of our ever-shifting environment and circumstances. It helps us upgrade and evolve and prevents us from becoming dated and thus obsolete!
The author, Dr. Ranee Kaur Banerjee consults under the brand Expressions@Work to create and deliver learning and development programs in communication and soft skills.
That, my grandmother always said, was to be our life ideal, our ultimate aspiration. As human beings, that was our fundamental duty--to keep on learning.
When you stopped learning and questioning and thinking and improving and becoming, you ceased being a Sikh.
That's a great ideal to have, whether or not you are a follower of Sikhism.
Learning helps us improve on who we are now. Continuous learning is continuous improvement, a neverending cycle of reinvention and upgrading that keeps transforming us. Thus, we evolve.
The ability to learn is:
- to find and get information
- to assimilate it and incorporate it within ourselves
- to create knowledge that we can then use to live our lives more efficiently, effectively and with more enjoyment and fulfillment
Learning helps us problem-solve and make decisions that are educated and pertinent. However, education and learning are not necessarily or always the same thing:
“Education is what people do to you. Learning is what you do for yourself”
Education is formal, driven by external forces, tied to a curriculum and a generalist agenda (a certificate, a diploma, an undergraduate or post-graduate degree) and it is "taught" by experts. It is thus given to you within the ambit of some clear rules of engagement and tested against a standardised syllabus within a specific scope of time and with expected "credit" or accreditation.
Learning is often informal and internally driven to satisfy a curiosity or a desire to know something. It is an active and subjective process in which I take control of the knowledge gathering process. I can learn anything, anywhere, from anyone at any time and by any means or methods I choose.
In fact, we human beings are natural, curious, exploratory, intrinsically motivated, constructive learners and a large chunk of our learning happens outside of our formal education, from life and work and all the things we see and experience.
Even more fundamentally, learning is a survival skill. It helps us change and adapt according to the constantly changing world around us. It helps us gain control of our ever-shifting environment and circumstances. It helps us upgrade and evolve and prevents us from becoming dated and thus obsolete!
The author, Dr. Ranee Kaur Banerjee consults under the brand Expressions@Work to create and deliver learning and development programs in communication and soft skills.
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