Unconscious, Unintended Learning – What we learn without trying to

Educational Planners design content for various courses- but do we take into account the power of what children learn unconsciously?

While we human beings think, plan and act, we end up facing a host of unintended consequences. The rise and fall of civilizations is largely the story of the human propensity to get carried away by short-term success and suffer long-term failure; the consequences of some aspects of the world-view and living processes of these civilizations were not foreseen. As Toynbee famously said, as far as civilizations go, “nothing fails like success”.

There are dangers in reinforcing what seems to be success but is actually a recipe for collapse; in systems theory this process is called a positive feedback loop; positive feedback, when a system is away from equilibrium, can lead to a spiraling and ultimately destructive effect – for example, the increasing destructive need for alcohol in an alcoholic. Natural systems rely on negative or ‘corrective’ feedback to bring systems back to equilibrium when the deviations are small. The signs of ‘success’ of our civilization, such as literacy rates, military power, GDP growth and rates of consumption seem to be on a spiral of positive feedback, needing correction.

To most of us, Education has been some kind of holy cow. But we now need to question how it is contributing to a civilization showing signs of decline. The positive side is that perhaps ours is the only civilization capable of a remarkable understanding and wide communication of these emergent realities. Therefore, hopefully, we can also search for ways in which Education can stem the tide. Many educational thinkers believe this is needed and possible, since it is not education itself which is the problem, but the ends it is used for.

As the industrial age unfolded, the education system began to be increasingly focused on ‘shaping’ students to meet industrial needs; by and large everyone began to cooperate – not just for the needs of the industry and the economic system but because the prevalent notions of success and a good life required such education in places where the long and multiple arms of development reached. Among the consequences is our ecological crisis.

In this scenario, what are children learning? What signifiers of success are being reinforced and rewarded and what meanings do children make of the world they live in?

Our world-view and self-concept are rarely deliberated on, if ever, in school or college. Yet an entire foundation of the way we live is laid through the kind of attitudes we develop towards the world and the way we hold our own role in it. This foundation of our world-view is mostly unintended, unconscious learning. Many educators teach with the best of intentions, but the underlying paradigms of  living  and  learning  have   a  more powerful impact on individuals and our civilization, and a flawed paradigm is thus perpetuated.

Most students – and most of us – hold some or all these notions and beliefs subconsciously as a kind of template for the way we live life:

• A narrow, short-term definition of success
• A self-seeking way of life as legitimate.
• Means are not as important as ends.
• A good life is a life of high consumption and minimum physical work
• Think within a boundary – not of the whole
• Put up with a split inner world.
• Accept authority-figures’ unquestioningly

These are a few of the meta frameworks for our living today – there must be more – and they have their “inner” and “outer” ecological consequences. Taken together they can keep us deadlocked in illusions and  conditioning that makes it easy for us to go into denial or withdraw into ‘business as usual’ when confronted with huge and complex crises like climate change.   Perhaps   understanding   them will help us awaken to the importance of adding new dimensions to education– especially of fostering the ecological self within and engaging in ecologically wise ways without.

A narrow definition of success
For ten to fifteen years in school and college, life revolves around tests, exams and marks. Marks determine success in school and money determines success in later life. This narrow definition of success is an essential part of the prevalent development paradigm – but it has led to an impoverishment in many other spheres: those of artistic sensibility, holistic thinking and spiritual search. It has effectively blinded us to the potential long-term failure of our civilization.

Most importantly, following the Western model determined by Macaulay, Descartes, Newton and Bacon, this narrow definition of success has made us completely undervalue the ecological wisdom of our culture, which could have provided a model not only for education but also for sustainability.

Selfishness is legitimate
Throughout the years of formal education, a student is used to bothering mostly about his books, his assignments, his tests, etc. Never before in any age have children and youth been so thoroughly groomed to be consumeristic and immersed in self-interest. Without opportunities to ‘learn’ co-operation, since it is not required for school tasks – children get the implicit message that selfishness is fine as a way of life. As Einstein said, “This crippling of individuals I consider the worst evil of capitalism – our whole educational system suffers from this evil: an exaggerated competitive attitude is inculcated into the student, who is trained to worship acquisitive success as a preparation for his future career.”

Means are not as important as ends
Parents and teachers encourage rote-learning and tuitions as the means to score high marks in exams without understanding of, or interest in, what is learnt: a student may opt for a medical seat if she can’t get into engineering without worrying about whether she is interested in healing or caring for other’s health; the lucrative career – the end – is all that matters.

An extension of valuing ends above means is that ethical means can be sacrificed for ‘progress’. Thousands can die of cancer while Thorium is mined for Nuclear energy — it does not matter as long as I get my electricity; two lakh farmers may commit suicide because of a draconian agricultural system – it does not matter as long as I get my food. Innumerable examples exist of unethical behaviour; they may have co-evolved with our factories, governments and malls, but aren’t they fostered by education?

A good life is a life of high consumption and minimum physical work
At school, children spend almost all their time on book-related learning. In mainstream schools, doing physical work as a part of learning is unheard of. Very little time is allocated for experiential learning or even for games and sports. Children in many homes in cities today are rarely required to do any physical work in the house – either because domestic help is available or because parents want the child to focus on studies and ‘spare’ the child such distractions. The hangover of our caste system perhaps plays a part as well in looking down on physical work.

The TV and movies show celebrities promoting a high-consumption life style, subtly encouraging everyone of us to consume as much as we can. Children pick up dreams of ‘a good life’ which makes it difficult for them to comprehend the need to think in fresh and natural ways, to critique the system and create new visions for sustainability.

Think within a boundary – not of the whole
Wear blinkers. Follow instructions. Do not question. Be a good soldier – don’t think for yourself. See connections only selectively – do not see long-term connections or connections that are many links away. These are the messages that children pick up unconsciously in school when they have to focus without a choice on the given syllabus and lessons for the day, day after day, for anywhere between 10 and 18 years of their life.

Schools and colleges have designed syllabi, which are content heavy. The unintended consequence is that there is no focus on critical thinking and taking initiative for a larger cause even if a few try to see the larger picture; most of us have forgotten to respond to real life- issues all around us. Wearing blinkers also means that we do not think for the whole school, the whole community or the whole earth – often not even for the whole family.

Put up with a split inner world
The school system and parents want all children to learn the same subjects in the same way without considering the child’s interests and innate talents. From years of tolerating work which we do not value or like, we learn to live with an unresolved lack of alignment in our thought, feeling and action. This split spills over into many things in life. I may have no interest or enthusiasm for my work, but will persist in it without looking for alternatives. I may understand my child’s love for music, but may push her into more science tuitions instead and deny her music classes. This ‘ability’ to live with a split inner world –the pathology within – is reflected in the world outside that we have created.

Unquestioning acceptance of authority
The class seating system seems designed to hand over power to the authority figure and to make children submit to the system. When the school system is almost universally accepted, its fundamentals are not questioned. Why should rural schools and city schools have the same syllabus? Why should agriculture not be included as a subject for farmers’ children? Why not more practical classes on basics like food, water and health or simple skills?

Our centralized authoritarian system may possibly wish good education for all, but it simply kills initiative and the ability to question – and hence we look for top-down solutions to all problems.

Learning from Nature’s Principles
It is widely understood today that all things are connected. The climate crisis, poverty, pollution, the aspirations, wants and needs of people, the economic, education, and political systems are all connected – just as all things are connected in Nature.

Fritjof Capra talks of the importance of eco-literacy, which includes a deep understanding of the principles of ecology – such as inter-dependence, co-operation, partnership, diversity, cyclical flow of energy/resources and flexibility.All these are patterns of organization, which help the eco-system maximize sustainability, survive disturbances and adapt to changing conditions.

To move away from the grip of unintended consequences and nurture a sustainable way of life, education too, needs to move closer to nature, in structure and process. Here are some lessons from nature that need to be applied to schools:
To move beyond a self-seeking outlook, can we have more school work that requires more cooperation than competition, as is the norm in nature?