No one should be bored when sitting in a class. Especially if you want to learn. I’ve been studying about learning theories, a topic I used to hate. But I’m required to do this for my masters degree, and I must subscribe to a theory when designing courses. And now I’m beginning to see the justification for understanding how people learn.
Passive Learning is old school. Most people are tired of the passive learning method where you sit in a class and listen to the professor or teacher pontificate. That’s passive. They dispense, and you absorb. Sometimes passive learning works — I have always learned from Brother Nibley’s “fire hose approach” — turn it on full blast and see who gets a mouth full — but I do better when I can go back and listen to his lectures via audio recordings. Or read his books with my colored pencil in-hand.
Constructive Learning is a theory currently being promoted. This is the idea that learners construct knowledge and meaning by building upon what they already know, and adding to that. The focus is on the learner, and less on the subject.
I think the desire to learn is paramount. But that’s not all, because real learning is more than memorizing, it’s more than parroting back what someone else wrote. (Unless we’re talking multiplication tables.)
In 2 Timothy, Paul describes how some people are always learning and never able to come to a knowledge of the truth. I looked that scripture up in several translations, but discovered a key by looking at the individual Greek words and this one in particular:
Which means not just “able” but “empowered” — to be able, have power, whether by virtue of one’s own ability and resources, or of a state of mind, or through favorable circumstances.
Perhaps Paul is talking about people who are always learning and never becoming empowered with a knowledge of truth. That means more to me. We can become empowered with truth, and in the temple we are endowed with power, but it is not automatic. You can turn on the tap, but not everyone wants a drink, or they feel that they have enough and need no more. Or they are happy with their old glass of water.
We’re required to act for ourselves, to search and ponder, as the saying goes in your favorite Primary song. You can’t just sit there in the temple and go through the motions. Why are you there? Just to be obedient? You have to get beyond the obedience answer. You need to take the next step yourself — analyze, evaluate, create. Ask yourself questions, why does Adam wake up twice?
Joseph Smith became empowered when he analyzed and went beyond the conventions of the day. He continued to question as he read the good books, he searched for greater understanding, and we must do the same.
Too many people are very rigid in their thinking, and have stopped learning. They are not analyzing, evaluating or creating. They are still at the bottom of the pyramid of Bloom’s Taxonomy: They remember. Or try to remember. Or they sit in a class that is passive and the learning is redundant. Sad to say that this is often the case on Sunday. I confess too, that I bring a book. Religious, of course.
Here’s my favorite portrayal of passive learning gone amuck.
