GF 3 14 25 A Student of Non-Traditional Learning

“The greatest teacher, failure is. We are what they grow beyond. That is the true burden of all masters.” ― Yoda

I am no Yoda, but I am certainly a student of failure. I am five years into this Gratitude Friday series of weekly gratitude reflection all on my web site here. Themes here have some repetition. One is learning as mine has been decidedly non-traditional. I had a wild ride through the educational system of the 1970s and 1980s. As an aside, one facet I have not written about is how the kids of my era in my community were Guinea pigs for new concepts on learning, principally two which I was exposed to from age 6 through 11. One was called the Initial Teaching Alphabet (ITA), which took children in my cohort and taught us to write and read a phonetic language of 45 symbols right when our brains were primed to learn language and then later had us abandon it when learning a new language was no longer something our brains were primed to do. The other was called New Math, which in my elementary school was called Individualized Mathematics Systems (IMS) and focused on conceptual learning of mathematics and learning non base ten numeral models and focused on kids learning through discovery. Kids graded their own work, so I gave myself good grades and drew rocket ships and dinosaurs in the wax markers to use in the IMS folders. Math discovery was not then nor now in my being.

Both were dismal failures but looking back, the companies who made all the learning material probably did quite well in that era. I think both of these strategies caused me more harm than good, but I digress. What I actually learned from a young age was that from my limited perspective, the traditional educational system was a joke. Few teachers actually challenged me to learn, one I encountered at age 15 I wrote about in Mr. R a 9th Grade English Teacher Schools a Cocky Runt of a Kid. I had one thing going for me, I was as a child and remain now a voracious reader. If I had not been my life could not have had the trajectory it did. The 70s and 80s were so different and we were free range kids who got ourselves into trouble and sometimes back out of it. As I wrote about in Barely Graduating High School and Surviving the Hubris of Youth, I attended maybe half the classes I was “in” in high school and graduated principally because a teacher saw something in me and furnished me a moment of grace.

That I survived it all, went back to college, eventually earned a master’s degree and teach at a University is singularly the most remarkable and amusing twist in my life beyond being in recovery as my early life motto was the same as Dupont “Better Living Through Chemistry.” While I am writing this with a tinge of humor, the underlying tone is one of deep humility as I do not think I could be more wrong in my world view and initial master plan for life. The best thing that happened to me was I failed completely and profoundly at an early age. In recovery, I got in touch with my own inquisitiveness and became a nontraditional learner. I am a lottery winner because of three factors. I do have a personality trait of inquisitiveness. I have read constantly since I first encountered books. And finally, I grew up in an era in which we had more latitude to fail and get back up on our feet than exist now in our less forgiving time.  

As the quote above reflects, I am no stranger to failure. The recovery lesson here (also a repetitive theme) is that failure can lead to even better things. The only real failure in life is to refuse to try again. Research has shown that talent is not the most significant factor in success, but rather Grit, the tenacity to keep getting back on your feet after getting knocked down. In that light, from my perspective in hindsight the traditional life path which was never mine, the one in which you go to school and then get a job, the two car garage and all would have not been a viable one for me. My path has a lot of twists and turns and experiential learning. As I spoke about above, I see our current era as one that is less forgiving and in this way we are not giving people a second chance, which in the end is shooting ourselves in the feet.

As for learning (and failure) my story is not over. Intentional learning for me, everyday gets a huge chunk of committed time, from books to academic and other sources on the web, but also experientially by trying new things to see what happens. The latter of course in ways far different than in my better living through chemistry era. None of us know what is in the cards. I am under no illusion that all things I am focused on now will work out completely and perfectly in the ways I imagine. Far from that case, I expect a lot will not work out, but that is not the end of my story (or yours) unless that is where I stop. While in some ways, the vigor I had in my youth is diminished, but I can still (literally and figuratively) get up off the floor of failure and give it another go.

In many ways, life is nontraditional learning. In traditional learning, we are taught prescribed concepts in logical steps with a predictable outcome. Almost nothing in life actually works that way. This week’s gratitude reflection is on the twists and turns of life and non-traditional learning, I am grateful for mine. 

What are you grateful for today?