“I firmly believe that love [of a subject or hobby] is a better teacher than a sense of duty - at least for me.” - Albert Einstein in the draft of a letter to Philip Frank, 1940

Today, I’m grateful to my wife, Sue, and sister, Nancy, for a conversation we had over the holidays about education and learning. Sue and Nancy have both worked as teachers and continue to educate children, and adults, today. Our conversation was wide-ranging and they offered me new perspectives on a number of aspects of how children and adults learn best. The one that made the biggest impression on me was about how we keep learning over the course of our lives.

As we talked together, Sue shared a story that her father, John, told her, and it has inspired me to write to you today. John was a botanist and spent his working life teaching at our university. He reached many students over the years with his passion for this subject, and I frequently meet new people who remember him and share stories about their experiences with him. He was also an iris breeder who introduced many new reblooming irises, and a wonderful father-in-law. I’ll always treasure the warm welcome he and his lovely wife, Fran, gave me as I joined their family and the loving way they included me in their lives.

John shared many wonderful ideas with his children and students, and I’ll always remember his strong feelings about life-long learning. He reminded us that, “A degree is not a license to stop learning!” In the story Sue shared, he explained to her that throughout our lives, we will meet with the same information again and again. Much like a scratch on a old-style record album, each time the record turns, we come to that same spot and here the “pop”. In the same way, we recognize that we’ve met an idea again and, he explained, ideas can become brighter, or dimmer as we meet them each time. Whether the idea grows brighter, and we gain a richer and more complete understanding, or dimmer depends on how we feel about it.

We may find an idea interesting, or challenging, and eagerly welcome each new opportunity to learn more. At each meeting, we bring our life experience to bear on the idea and may recognize new subtleties, see it from a different perspective, and make new connections between this idea and others. By the same token, we may find an idea, or even an entire subject, boring, confusing, or even unpleasant in some other way, and avoid engaging when these new opportunities come along. Just as a preconceived dislike for snakes or spiders might lead us to avoid learning more about these fascinating creatures, a preconceived dislike of mathematics, history, or ideas about people and society that are different from those we were raised with, might lead us to overlook the opportunity to learn something new.

The messages that children, and adults, receive about their ability to learn, whether it is appropriate for them to learn about a given idea, and which ideas are worth learning about can have a powerful impact on how they respond to these opportunities to learn, and to learn more. In some cases, they can even prevent us from noticing that we’ve been given a chance to learn something new. John, Nancy, Sue, and other wonderful teachers help prepare their students to continue learning by giving them messages encouraging them to welcome each chance to learn, to have confidence in their ability to learn, and to recognize that, even with ideas that are very familiar, we are never done learning.

Throughout our lives, we will change so that even the same information presented in the same way can affect us much differently. Have you ever read a book again to find that it offers you something much different than it did before? I often read books again, and sometimes find that those I struggled with most the first time have the greatest gifts to offer when I meet them again. When I first read Moby Dick, I found Melville’s long descriptive passages incredibly dull and hard to slog through. Reading the book again decades later, these same words provided so much rich texture and music to the story! I had changed and was finally ready to hear the music.

I love John’s story about meeting ideas again and again, and I realize, that when you begin by being familiar with something, that can be a head start. As Nancy and Sue discussed teaching, they shared how important, and useful, it can be to present the same information, for example scientific principles, to children again and again. To let them meet these familiar ideas again at different ages so that they can not only learn more about them as they and their experience grow, but also so that they can become comfortable with this idea that we always have the opportunity to learn more. To find new wonder in what may seem to be familiar places.

I’ve especially appreciated these opportunities to learn more in my life when I’ve formed misunderstandings. Encountering the information again, I’ve recognized these, corrected my thinking, and gained a new perspective on an idea I thought I already understood. I’ve also had some wonderful, exciting, moments in learning when our shared understanding of things has changed as we make new discoveries. I’ll never forget the Monday that the graduate student teaching us neurophysiology walked into class, told us to get out our notes from Friday, and had us replace some of what he’d told us with new findings he’d learned about from a colleague over the weekend. We had information that wouldn’t be published in Science until the next month! His passion for the information he was sharing was contagious.

Just as John shared with Sue that we will meet ideas again and again during our lives, I’ve found this is also as true for our experience of feelings, and relationships, including our understanding of, and relationship to, ourselves. By remaining open to learning new things about our feelings, and what they can teach us about ourselves and others, we can learn throughout our lives to enjoy richer and more fulfilling relationships, and to face grief and tragedy with greater strength of spirit. By engaging with our feelings honestly as we encounter them again, we can continue growing in our humanity, and in our connection to ourselves and others.

John, Sue, Nancy, and other loving parents like them, realize that learning about ideas and feelings can always enrich a person’s life, and they prepare their children to enjoy, and engage fully in, this journey. They recognize, as Plutarch did, that “The mind is not a vessel that needs filling, but wood that needs igniting.” I believe that the same is true of the heart and soul and that, once the spark blossoms into flame, all of life can be brightened, and warmed, by this fire. I am so grateful to have these, and so many other loving parents, teachers, loved ones, and friends enriching my life by sharing their light, and warmth, with me.

© 2017 James Michael. The text of this work is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0