On Teaching and Learning

Let me share words of wisdom from my most favourite book: "Walking on Water" by Derrick Jensen. The book is mostly about teaching and writing, but it offers a lot of valid points applicable to almost everything.

Years ago I got into a long conversation with a well-traveled guitarist. He’d played with the best, he said, going back to the sixties. He’d shared stages with everyone from Carlos Santana to Randy California to Jimi Hendrix to Jimmy Page. But the guitarist who’d taught him the most, he said, was an old blues master he’d met when he was a kid. He’d asked the man to teach him how to play, and the man had responded, “I can teach you everything I know in fifteen minutes. Then you just have to go home and practice for fifteen years.”

It’s pretty clear to me the same is true for writing, for high jumping, and for life.

My first semester at VU started recently and it made me think about learning. As I've already done 4 years of uni back in Korea, I know how students feel when they cannot keep up with the instructor; they get frustrated and sometimes just give up. 

But what they forget is that uni is just a tool, a means to end end of learning. You can go to other education providers, private or public, domestic or overseas; You can use online learning platforms like Udemy or edX, free or not. The way of learning doesn't really matter - what counts is your dedication to education and will to follow through every step. Maybe you have an instructor who explains the concept in a simple, easy way. That's good for you. 

However, at the end of the day, it's your education; you have to do the actual "learning". If your instructor isn't the very best in the world - oh well, bad luck. But you still can seek knowledge, resorting to other resources. As they say, "where there is a will, there is a way." 

I honestly don't expect my instructor to "teach" me everything I need to know about Python in 4 weeks; but it doesn't matter. I'll be practicing and learning it for the rest of my life. I'd do that, not because I need to pass the course, but because I really want to learn this particular programming language and be good at it. And this is why I'm not a big fan of "teaching", but I am a passionate advocate of learning by one's own experience.

Maybe people in education can put it better and offer more valid examples, but I just wanted to talk about this as school is in session and that got me thinking. I'll be thrilled if anyone would be willing to share their experience in the comment below. Thank you for reading.