Thursday 28 July 2016

Learning is like...

Learning is like:
The growth of a plant
The movement of the eye over a painting
Wandering through the streets of an unfamiliar city
The development of a piece of music
Improvisation
Falling in love
Doodling
Falling out of love
Reading
Praying
An evolving ecosystem
The sensation of taste
a caress
Death
Silence
Dreaming
Relationships
Movement
War
Heat
A dying ecosystem
Sex
A drama
To say "it is like" is to invite a description. Learning is like many descriptions - put together - like poetry (which is another one).

The question is not what learning is like. It is what it means to be like anything else. 

We could talk about metaphors. A metaphor is a description, after all. But playing a game of identifying metaphors is like dividing "Der Ring Des Nibelungen" into its constituent Leitmotifs. The music gets lost.

Much better, I think, to ask about the dynamics of multiple descriptions. That goes to the heart of the question about learning and teaching.

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