Lifestyle Change for Lifelong Learning

Posted on August 12, 2011 | 1 Comment

The best, top-ranked, and most popular blogs on lifelong learning, continuing education, and adult learning are often passed over. Not because of their importance, but just being hard to find in most media and blog directories. If you wanted to browse these topics on Yahoo! Huffington Post, or Technorati, just to name a few, there is no specific section dedicated to the education or learning of adults. To be fair, you might find some related clip on DIY (do-it-yourself), still all of them are lumped into a catch-all category called ’Lifestyle.’

Lifestyle suggests a preference and choice rather than being essential. Perhaps this explains why education after high-school has become an option and not a given right.

Some argue for ‘lifelong learning’, but it can also suggest an individual’s role to find bits of information in the same way of deciding what clothes to wear, movies to watch, or cellphones to text and never talk from.  These other choices are indeed lifestyle preferences; should creating an education also be one of them?

This explains why I prefer using the expression, ‘lifelong education’: Simply to promote and advance a discussion about how our community colleges, universities, even professional, technical and vocational schools have a societal role and responsibility to be continual partners in our educational need.

In the meantime, I would suggest a re-classification, a proverbial ‘lifestyle change’,  in how lifelong learning and continuing education is grouped in media outlets.  Who knows, it might not only change our choice of living, but also our style of learning.

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Posted in Lifelong Education, Lifelong Learning, Money, Work, & Lifestyle, Technology & Networking, Uncategorized

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Linking Music Lyrics to Learning

Posted on August 1, 2011 | 2 Comments

Many have different tastes and styles about the best music for reading or studying. Melodies like classical or light jazz are occasional suggestions, but there is something about hearing words, lyrics, and turn-of-phrases that teaches the experiences of living and learning. 

I think musical lyrics are often ignored lessons for learning and education.

In fact, I have a couple of questions for you:

First, what’s your favorite song or best lyric, verse, or title?  I mean the kind of song that you can remember without assistance from karaoke or concert.

Next question: Why is it remembered?

For me it depends on the specific lesson that the song brings. This can be the way the singer captures a moment that explains my whole life; or a key verse that teaches me something about society I won’t find in books.

We as listeners learn stories from music and its lyrics.  Stories about singers, situations, and solutions summed up into 3-5 minutes.   I argue these harmonious snapshots consist of our continual ups-and-downs, either personally, socially, or even spiritually. Sort of reminders of thoughts, choices, and actions seen through the mirrors of music.  Certain lyrics speak to us and lead in transforming our thinking, in how we treat others, and in the kind of life we would like to pursue. 

If all of us can agree that music teaches, then why not feature it in classrooms too.  In lectures, conferences, and discussions as well as exams, essays, and other forms of evaluation.  As adults, in addition to crafting a resume for employers, what about building a portfolio of learning music for yourself, linking lyrics to lessons learned that teaches others about who you are and in what ways you  have grown.

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Posted in Lifelong Learning, Money, Work, & Lifestyle, Reform & Improvement, Self-Directed Learning, Teacher Development, Uncategorized

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Emotions of Education: A Passion for Reform

Posted on July 15, 2011 | 2 Comments

Many agree that emotions can rule over all reason and sense. Emotions can also encourage and drive us to achieve enormous feats. They are a power with a wide range of potential. 

Now what if emotions were targeted toward education? I mean, what would be the emotional range that we could learn from?

I can think of three in particular: Pain, Pleasure, and Passion.  These emotions when geared toward education can reveal some surprising insights. For instance: What is it about education that brings us pain? Some are failing grades, tuition, student loans, finding the right schools, filling out entrance applications for our children or ourselves, and so on.   

What about the  pleasures of education? Some can identify with receiving great grades, degrees, diplomas, even ‘aha moments’ from learning something new or seeing someone grow in understanding and perspective.

Lastly,  there is the emotion of passion in education.  This is arguably the most misunderstood.  On one hand, we think about passion as a desire, pursuit, personal calling, or profound interest in an area or discipline.  Along these lines, experiencing passion in education would be a welcomed thing that helps define our purposes and pursuits.

On the other hand, passion relates to endurance. In fact, a Latin version of passion ties to patience and ’suffering.’  Remember the ole saying: ’Patience is a Virtue’? Well in this case, patience is having the passion to endure, suffer, and even overcome the circumstances.

Which leads me to a final insight for those who claim to have a passion for education: teachers, school boards, politicians, governments, and learning institutions such as schools, colleges, and universities. 

Can all of them match their desire to pursue education with the suffering and endurance that is necessary  to change it for everyone, especially for those who do not know educational reform and improvement must take place.   

My worry is that many are distracting us with superficial solutions for educational pains, promoting unearned pleasures, while ignoring the most important and emotional impact of advancing a full passion toward a lasting and lifelong education.

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Posted in K-12 Education, Literacy & Language, Money, Work, & Lifestyle, Reform & Improvement, Teacher Development, Uncategorized

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How Adult Learning Can Change K-12 Education

Posted on July 1, 2011 | 5 Comments

Adult Learning & Continuing Education is an emerging field that still has a long way to go in defining its discipline and securing its place in society. Yet there are significant points and challenges that must be understood. 

A common challenge has been distinguishing itself from traditional elementary and secondary schooling, always known as kindergarten through highschool (K-12).

An important point is that although college education is included in the field, Adult Learning & Continuing Education focuses more on post-college instruction, continuing-professional education, and learning for multiple situations.

Overall, the distinctive quality of the field is both common and unique. Common like any other academic discipline such as law, medicine, and even K-12 education. But unique in looking from two perspectives: the perspective of expert and of experience.

For example, those who study law, do not often learn how to be a client; medical doctors study medicine, but not enough time concentrates on learning how to be a patient.  K-12 educators learn how to teach programs, but not always about what it means to be a student.  Perhaps that’s why many believe that lawyers are the worst clients, doctors are terrible patients, and it’s harder to teach a teacher.

But Adult Learning & Continuing Education is a discipline that must learn its practice through sharing its problems, using their experiences as a resource for answers.  In this way, these adults become experts in discovering what kinds of learning works immediately and for what purpose, since results are coming from personal experiences.

So why is this important? Because this field has something to offer, especially to our children.  It gives a second chance to reexamine how we learned as kids: To discover what worked; what didn’t; when we learned best; what kind of study habits were productive; or even whether we had study habits at all. 

If society could see more of this value, then this field could be the research & development for education. K-12, for example, could benefit from findings that transform classes, programs and instruction, constructing more productive approaches for future education. 

In this effort, the fundamentals of education would be explored where current K-12 teachers would be able to advance their lesson plans into subjects and technologies, where we as kids never learned or experienced.

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Posted in Adult Learning, Experential Learning, K-12 Education, Organizational Learning, Reform & Improvement, Uncategorized

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Engaged-Learning: Linking Education to Everyone

Posted on June 2, 2011 | 3 Comments

What do you think? Should education be a right or a privilege?

To be fair, I’m mostly talking about education beyond high-school or even college. But with rising costs of tuition, the inconvenience of attending, or the enormous time pursuing,  it offers us this kind of choice of going back-to-school or continuing as already predetermined.

In this way, education is a privilege afforded by those who either have the money (or worse, student loans), the time (balancing work, school, and life responsibilities), or convenience (or at least managing it).

But what if education was a right?

Where institutions of higher learning would provide free and low-cost continuing education; where employers would give money and sabbatical time for renewing and gaining skills; where society would embrace lifelong learning and education, as learning for-its-own-sake, to become more informed and enlightened citizens of communities.

This is what engaged-learning could be—and should be: Linking education for everyone at all stages of life and learning.

So, returning to the question: Should education be a right or a privilege? Or better, should we never have to answer this question because someday we will experience no difference.

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Posted in Community Engagement, Engaged-Learning, Higher Education, K-12 Education, Reform & Improvement, Uncategorized

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