Reflection Paper – How People Learn

In the following essay I would like to explore my thoughts and opinions on the learning process and the effect it has on the individual that it produces.

While thinking about the topic of the nature of humans at birth, I had to do some soul searching. While my first tendencies would be to say I believe people are born innately ‘good’, after really thinking about this question and relating it back to readings and my own experience, I’ll say that people are born with neutral tendencies, each of us a tabula rosa, and it is society’s impression built up over time that produces ‘good’ or ‘bad’ actions from individuals. It is through personality built up learning from others that some people reach for the stars while others wallow in the gutter. To me, a person is always greater than the sum of their parts. There is something extra that drives healthy individuals to aspire to continually better themselves and to better the world around them.
I believe that each person has the innate ability to affect their own environment, and it is only through ignorance or past psychic damage that one chooses ‘bad’ over ‘good’. However I feel that healthy, full-informed people will make choices for ‘good’, whatever their society has told them ‘good’ is.
Genetics play a complicated role in our development. Humans are the result to varying degrees of both ‘nature’ and ‘nurture’, each of us is variably affected by one or the other for each of our myriad traits. Each is a unique combination of traits, the result of their genes, upbringing, education, and socialization. It is society’s job, the parents, teachers and other caregivers, to shape the growing individual into a useful role.
In the distant past, when our ancestors were out hunting for dinner and encountered a saber-toothed tiger, it was good to have a ‘fight or flight’ response built in to our genetics. It meant the difference between life and death. Today, those same responses are a detriment, when instead of a predator it is your boss asking why the monthly TPS reports are late again. I believe part of being human is trying to find ways to mitigate our automatic responses so that we can direct our energies back into society in purposeful, meaningful ways.
I believe the most important component in production of the individual psyche is the environment around that person as they grow to maturity. Unfortunately the world is not a perfect place, and the physical and social environments individuals are brought up in vary greatly.
Socioeconomic status and ethnicity play extremely important roles in development. It is an unfortunate fact that resources are not even across all of society, and those individuals from lower socioeconomic backgrounds are at a distinct disadvantage from birth. People in lower socioeconomic settings have more of a chance of detrimental environmental effects. Poorer nutrition, high crime rates, peer pressure, more financial problems, and bad role models often lead those who feel trapped to risk bad choices as ‘the only way to get by’ or hoping for a chance to escape. It is a shame that the areas where these problems are most prevalent often receive the least amount of effort from the greater society to assist them. That said, people in the middle and higher socioeconomic brackets have their own unique problems to be overcome as well.
Since our environment, for example in the form of nutritional needs, can effect the expression of our genetics, poor environment in the formational years can forever affect the abilities of the future individual. It is unfortunate that some people are not given the same opportunities as others. On the other hand, if a person is dedicated and makes the correct choices and takes the correct actions, then I believe any situation can be overcome. One sometimes has to make one’s own opportunities.
Different cultures around the world have various levels of technology, varying economic abilities, and endless cultural variation for what is considered a ‘good’ member of society. As I’ve mentioned before, I believe it is the society that shapes the individual’s beliefs. Each culture around the world will instill it’s own belief system upon its people. It is not my place to judge the worth of any given society, rather I would celebrate the variety of all that results.
Technology has always played a part in our education and thus in making us who we are. From the earliest cuneiform writing right up to today’s super computers and high-speed digital fiber-optic Internet, they are all just tools. With the advent of our modern age, and the ever-faster acceleration in our level of technology, it plays an ever-increasing role. Here again socioeconomic status comes into play. If one has never had the opportunity to use and learn these technologies, how can they be expected to compete for jobs that require these skills? It takes an especially dedicated individual to have the initiative to overcome the hurdles and to better themselves through getting the education they need. Maybe some day our technology will give us the ability to directly download knowledge into our minds, as Neo experiences in The Matrix. Install the right software and “I know Kung-fu”, but even then integrating that new knowledge will mean learning to use it in the context of the society around us.
As I see it, learning is the process of integrating new information into who we are. How we learn evolves as we grow and mature. At birth, our cognitive processes are not yet developed. For the first years of life we respond mainly through conditioned and automatic emotional responses, which are hard-wired into us. Development is partly physical in nature, so that as we mature, our brains develop the cognitive ability to handle more advanced situations. When a person is cognitively capable of handling more advanced developmental situations, society advances them along the educational path. In modern society we have the educational system codified and refined so that a child is expected to steadily advance along this graded progression and result in a productive member of society when they graduate. Given the varied results, I think it can be agreed that it will never be that simple. I see learning more as an extremely individual, gradual process of exploration and integration as one slowly learns life’s lessons. Our society’s regimented system works for most of the people most of the time. Perhaps if individual differences could be better assessed and addressed, we would see more people reaching their goals, and a richer, fuller integration into society by more individuals.
Who is responsible for directing our integration into society? I believe that ultimately, we are each of us responsible for our own learning and development as human beings. This is of course depended upon our stage in life, and how much cognitive ability we have to ultimately take those reins. When a child is born, its well-being is the responsibility of its parents and the health-care workers that shepherd it into life. The early years of the child’s development fall squarely in the hands of its parents and family, who must begin the education and socialization processes. As the child develops some cognitive ability and reaches school age, they begin to be more integrated into the greater society around them. At this point the child’s teachers and peers also must assume some of the responsibility for the child’s development. This is not to say the family’s responsibility is lessened, but rather it is additive. The teachers and peers become additional influences on the child’s development. Eventually the person is old enough to join the work force, at which point their new coworkers assume some responsibility, though by this point the individual is expected to have developed social skills appropriate for their roles. In the end, it is the choices we make as individuals that result in the conditions we live with. We must learn to integrate into society, to each find our own place where we can be happy and prosper.
In conclusion, I have addressed my current views on learning and the educational process. I look forward to the further lessons to be learned in this class and in my future classes, as each in turn will help shape my thoughts on the learning process, and will help me grow as an individual and as an educator.