Bridging the learning gap

Stuart Middleton goes back to school and learns that while the concept of lifelong learning might be simple, the actuality is a different story all together. It is a good thing that when five year olds start at school, they have no idea our intention is to turn them into lifelong learners. I am learning contract bridge at the moment. I have nearly finished my course of 10 weekly lessons, and I am ready to admit publicly that it isn’t getting easier. I have listened carefully, worked hard to remember whether to bid or overcall, got used to being told that I was the dummy, and learnt new levels of etiquette – “Thank you, partner” – but still wonder very seriously whether I shall master this game. Perhaps it is the teacher. So I head off and purchase books such as the Idiots Guide to Contract Bridge, Bridge for Dummies and Bridge for those Challenged in their Youth by Snap, but still the fog swirls in and over me. The teacher is very good, I conclude. I try the internet and Google away. At first I end up in a site for engineers who are intent on building a bridge rather than playing bridge, and who might wish to sign a contract. Eventually I find a helpful site and learn several things. Then I find out that in class I am learning the Acol (surely they mean alcohol) system of contract bridge, and these new insights I have accessed independently from the internet apply not to it but to other varieties of the game. Learning without guidance can be misleading and time-wasting. I have arrived at a new and I think very insightful couple of understandings as a result of all this. One is that I am being taught too much – what I need to know is what I need to know next rather than everything there is to know about contract bridge. I remember my son coming home from school with yet another perfect score in the regular Friday spelling test. Effusive congratulations from proud father met with a nonchalant response. “The tests are easy, Dad; it’s the words you want to use that are hard.” So I wonder if, like a whole lot of things, it is not contract bridge that is hard, but learning contract bridge in a classroom with a whole group of learners. I envy those who seem to have a better grasp, and then discover they are not beginners. Perhaps I am in the wrong class? I envy those who get all their homework correct and then wonder if they did it themselves. Perhaps doing my homework in two minutes prior to rushing out the door is not the best approach? I envy those who ask clever questions. Are classrooms the ideal place to try to learn something? I am meant to be a lifelong learner, and yet that does not, it seems to me, make the learning process any less of a challenge. What is easier is simply the crusty wiles of age. I am going to conquer this without the aid of counselling, without needing remedial contract bridge lessons. No one is going to report to my parents on my progress through the NAPLAN, I have yet to actually burst into tears during a lesson, and my parents have yet to be contacted by the bridge school – were they to be, it would be an act of unprecedented psychic effort. But the penny has dropped. I am a lifelong learner – it is simply that learning has all these frustrations. Learning is not always easy; it is a fraught act. I know I am making progress (I can hold 13 cards in my hand with aplomb, I know the order of the suits, and can bid with an authority that does reflect the lack of certainty I bring to the task. But the 10 weeks of instruction is close to ending, and I am terrified that I might be promoted to contract bridge level 2. Being a lifelong learner is not to be in a state of sublime competence. Rather, it is to be in increasing control of a process. And how do we reach this point? By exerting increasing control over what we learn. It is about control of and power over self. That is the great gift that an education can deliver to young people eventually, but not while they are at school. There they need to be taught well that which they need next. Stuart Middleton is director of external relations at Manukau Institute of Technology in NZ and writes on education at EDTalkNZ (www.edtalk.com or www.stuartmiddleton.co.nz).

Bridging the learning gap

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Head of Teaching & Learning | NAISDA

Australian Signals Directorate

Assistant Professor in Real Estate / Sustainability / Technology

Director of Research Centre for Resources Engineering towards Carbon Neutrality

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