Is Learning Invisible to the Learner? :: Education Teaching Learning Essays

Is Learning Invisible to the Learner? Think back to all the things that you learned during your childhood and see if you remember them? If you do remember them, think about how you learned them. Did you ever realize that the experiences that you encountered would still be with you today? Or did you even realize that you were learning from the company around you. Well, people who get a better understanding of how they learn and who they learn from can become better learners themselves. Maybe if you would have had a better understanding for how you learn and whom you learn from you would have been a better learner. Smith, Golub, and Gardner are three authors who address this issue. Smith is one author who says that we learn without realizing we’re learning. He believes that we learn by the company we keep. This kind of learning puts us in a category of belonging to a club. At the start of our childhood we start to develop an identity through the members of our club. How many times did you do something because of the actions of others? This is the type of thing that influences us in the way we learn. While growing up, I mainly stayed around one group of friends. I established an identity through these people and I felt comfortable around them. This group of friends was considered my club. This group of people influenced much of my action whether it was in a positive or negative way. But regardless of how I was being influenced, I was still learning something new. For example, there was once a cactus in my 5th grade classroom that I always wanted to touch. I wanted to touch it because I knew it was sharp and I wanted to see if it would prick me and make me bleed. Now I realize that would have been very dumb because of the action of one of my friends. Unfortunately he decided to touch the cactus for the same reason, only to find out that it had poisonous needles that caused his skin to break out in hives. Luckily I learned from his actions instead of making the same mistake. This person along with all the others around me taught me so many different things that I was never even aware of. Did I ever consider that I learned from them?