What is learning?

I just came back from the International Association of Facilitators conference in Vancouver (British Columbia) full of new ideas and renewed motivation. In a way, facilitation is about enabling learning in groups. Facilitators help groups achieve their objectives by guiding them through a process that allows them to learn from each other and get new insights about their organization in order to move forward in a new direction.

Learning requires an open mind which means that in order to learn you have to remind yourself that your view of the world, what you think you know, is not necessarily so. Learning requires humility. An admission to yourself that you need to create with others a new understanding.

I started reading Brida the new book by Paulo Coehlo (author of the book The Alchemist)and these words struck me

"Learning something means coming into contact with a world of which you know nothing. In order to learn, you must be humble." (p.42)

I think that there is a misconception out there about learning. Attending a training workshop or completing a university or college course does not necessarily equal learning. In that training or course you may have been exposed to new ways of looking at things. If you chose to have an open mind to what the teacher (and other students) would teach you then you registered that the new perceptions would enhance what you already knew about this topic and adopted it. When you integrate new notions in your repertory of knowledge then learning has begun. But the true test of learning is evidenced by a change of behavior. Real learning has taken place when you have changed your way of acting as a result of the new knowledge. New thoughts lead to new ways of behaving in the world.

If I had to summarize my purpose in life in two words it would be teaching and learning. To me learning is a priviledge. It is our purpose as human beings.

Someone once said that we are not human beings on a spiritual quest but spiritual beings having a human experience. I like that...

To learn more about Paulo Coehlo, a wonderful and philosophical author here is his website:

http://www.paulocoehlo.com.br/engl/