A better definition of Learning

Webster and Oxford define learning as "knowledge or skill acquired by instruction or study". Most of our lives are governed by this definition - from pre-school all the way to adulthood, including certifications. While this is a decent definition, it does not exactly cover all aspects of learning, does it? How about learning by mistakes? How about the 'Eureka!' moments that you go through when you are in the bath tub? How about learning from others' learning?

We see glimpses of these types of learning either embedded in the generic definition of learning or as an addendum to the 'taught' learning process, such as team discussions typically done in business schools. However, due to the generally accepted notion of learning, not much emphasis is given on these other forms. This can be an issue because we tend to lose significant opportunities to learn in our child and adulthood by focusing only on rote learning and not the other options of learning.

Can we do better? Yes, we can. In fact, we don't have to look far. A much more precise definition of learning has been given in the Sanskrit literature, which amazed me when I first came across it as part of Prof. B. Mahadevan in his article on Sanskrit and Business Management that I blogged about earlier. Here's the verse, and my visual depiction of the verse.

In English,

Aachaaryaat paadamaadatthe paadam sishyah svamedhayaa
Paadam sabrahmachaaribyo paadam kaalakramena cha

Sounds Sanskrit? Here's the breakdown (thanks to my brother, who can actually understand as opposed to just reading it!):

aacharyaat - from the guru
paadam - quarter
aadatte - receives
paadam - quarter
shishya: - student
sva medhayaa - by his own intelligence
paadam - quarter
sabrahmachaaribhi: - from his fellow students
paadam - quarter
kaala kramena - by time
ca - and

Essentially, learning is defined as one quarter teaching, one quarter self study, one quarter group study, and one quarter done over time. Can you be more precise?!

Taught
If you think a bit, you can see the depth of the meaning that is described so beautifully here. You learn from your teacher. This is the one that is done formally through the education system.

Self-Study
Then you reflect on the thoughts be they coming from the teacher, of your own volition, or from your surroundings. A classic example of this would be the 'Eureka!' moment that Aristotle had when he was sitting in his bath tub. How many times have you had such moments when you were driving or when you were on the shower? Many a times, I have found myself honing my ideas or thoughts better, be it related to my work or personal life when I just sit back and think about it. Maybe emphasis on meditation in Sanskrit was to promote this form of learning.

Group Study
You also learn from your peers, a concept established successfully by the 'Hole in the wall' experiment by Sugata Mitra. While we do this in school most times, there is sadly very little emphasis on the power of such learning. Normally, we are encouraged to do things by ourselves than as a group. On the contrary, you can see most business schools put a lot more emphasis on group discussions, potentially to unlock this form of learning. I remember my college days where a bunch of my friends used to study through the night (in the middle of watching a variety of serials that come late night ;)) weeks before the final exam. It helped me personally and I believe the group in general as well (we all got really good grades!).

Over Time
Lastly, there is the process of learning over time, either by way of experience or by way of history. As the famous quote goes, "those who do not learn from history are condemned to repeat it" - true words, embedded in this stanza ages ago. Most projects take some time to 'learn' from successes or failures of previous projects.

Years back, computer scientist Peter Naur wrote a paper titled "Programming as theory building" - one of the best articles I've read, and something that holds true even today, even in completely different contexts. Essentially, he argues 'swappable' resources are not a great idea. His argument is that each programmer builds a mental model or theory about his program during the course of development. In most cases, this model is seldom documented or communicated with other resources (primarily due to the difficulty in expressing the model in words). As a result, when the programmer leaves, the theory leaves with him, essentially resulting in another programmer building another theory (or rarely, the same theory) from scratch. How many times have you looked at a piece of code and wondered what the heck the programmer was thinking?!

I found this concept in a completely different setting, in a book called The art of game design by Jesse Schell. In the book, the author describes a concept called Flow Channel identified by psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (and they say my name is hard to pronounce!), which is the basis for levels in a game - more on this in another blog.

So, in effect, our education system is really tapping into only 25% of the whole learning process. Imagine how it would be to tap into the whole process?! I wonder when we will learn that the learning provided by our learned ancestors would facilitate better learning for the future generations.