Skill Factor # 4- What School Did Not Teach Me That Life Always Asks of You!
SKILL FACTOR # 4:
Experiential Learning
If you are to go into a class of school children and give
them work to do on something that they have not learnt before and leave them to
do the work, coming back after a while, you are likely to find them having done
nothing even though the work may be within their scope of understanding. If you
ask them why, they will tell you that they have never been taught about it. This
is how the colonial education system has crippled most of us. It goes in the
opposite direction of real life set up.
In his book, “How dumb people become rich”, Joe Jutrisa
explains this aspect when he talks about
‘reverse learning’ vs. ‘experiential
learning’. Most schools teach “reverse
learning”. First they teach you the lesson and then you go and have the
experience. Nowhere in nature do you see this, only in the
education system. If you get the lesson wrong, you get punished.
But you still haven’t had the experience! Insane, isn’t it. In
the real world as well as in nature you do
first and then you
get your lesson. It’s logical. If you screw up, you learn a
lesson, make adjustments and continue until you succeed. Just ask
any baby. It’s called “experiential learning” and it’s not emphasized
in school.
Real life works with experiential learning and it began with
the maker himself. Let us look at how the Creator mentored the first man.
Now the Lord God had formed out of the ground all the beasts of the field and all the birds of the air. He brought them to the man to see what he would name them; and whatever the man called each living creature, that was its name. So the man gave names to all the livestock, the birds of the air and all the beasts of the field. [Gen 2:19-20]
Without any lesson from the maker, he had a task to name all
the animals. I wonder how many words were in his vocabulary. The interesting
thing is that God stood to watch how the man would respond. He didn’t help him and
teach him. He was introducing him to the dynamics of real life and teaching
them to use the greatest gift that we are all endowed with at birth. It is
called IMAGINATION. Where was he going to get all the names for so many animals
in their hundreds if not thousands? He could only find them in His imagination.
This is why one of the greatest scientists of all time said,
“Imagination is more
valuable than knowledge”- Albert Einstein
Imagine if we
only relied on reverse learning, where would we be? The one who invented the
light bulb would have waited for school to teach it first, but where was the
teacher going to learn what to teach. This world would be boring and stagnant.
Reverse learning was meant for the industrial revolution when those who had
used their imagination wanted to multiply what they had to maximize on profit.
To do so they had to put a system that discouraged creativity and hence manipulate
labour for selfish endeavors. We grew in such kind of system and now in our
Zimbabwean setup we are finding ourselves in a mess where no one will lift us.
Why haven’t you
started your business? Why have you forsaken what you were passionate about? Is
it because you could not find anyone to teach you about it? There are no
schools that teach most of what we are wired to do and a mind that is
programmed to operate in a reverse learning mode is doomed. I pursued my dream
of life coaching when there was no school that taught life coaching in
Zimbabwe.
We are born in
the right direction of experiential learning. Most of what we learn when we are
growing up is experience first. We are not taught to play, relate, talk, walk and eat on our own. Most of the time people will come along to help
us in what we have already courageously and with many risks learnt to do ourselves.
Everything is perfect until we step in the classroom when you are supposed to
do things in a certain order. Being told not to do anything before receiving
instruction is the beginning of the path of poverty.
If ever you are
going to maximize on your potential and bring out your creativity and reorient your
life to a path of maximum fruitfulness you have to be set free from the prison
of reverse learning. The world is changing so fast and education is a very
short shelf life so waiting until you acquire a degree before you invent
something or before you put your ideas to work will mean chasing after the
wind. You do not need to learn everything about business before you start one
but you will learn more as you go along if you start one. Whatever pain, loss
of finances, time and whatever is the tuition fees of experiential learning. Henry
Ford had a sixth grade education. Thomas Edison had only three
months of schooling but they are some of the people who changed the lives of
many. What was the secret of their lives? While many were in formal schooling
they were undergoing real education as they clothed their imagination with
matter.
The greatest gift that we can give our children is the
knowledge and philosophy of understanding that life is what is inside them and
what comes from within. With a strong enough will and meekness they can find
ways of drawing from what is inside to make a reality of their choice- Coach
Tarie: Wisdom Garden.
The destiny of Africa lies in our ability to recapture the
unlimited potential of imagination and be set free from the colonial education
system that made imagination the least rewarded ability. We need to learn
experiential learning that comes from a personal self-discovery building the
right self-concept and self-image of oneself. Coach Tarie Coaching and Consultancy (COTACC)
and the Arise Africa Cause are there to help as many Africans to capture
transformation and begin to learn and apply these life skills that are not
taught in formal educational structures but that are relevant to realize real
success. It is our heartbeat to help Individuals, families, organizations, governments
to be what they were created to be, have what they were destined to have in
order to do what they were wired to do by original design.
Coach Tarie-Pastor|Life-Executive-Entrepreneuship
Coach|Consultant| LeadershipTrainer| Speaker| Blogger| Developmentalist|www.coachtarie.com| coachtarie@ gmail.com| facebook/twitter/linkedin @ Coach Tarie| +263773 301 267/ +263 738 494 105