Friends Don’t Need Reconciling

G.M. Trevelyan noticed trends even in his day that provoked a timeless observation: “Education has produced a population able to read but unable to distinguish what is worth reading.”  In a nutshell, he was referring to the age-old tension between learning and thinking.

If you remove the one, the other is bound to go.  When we abandoned classical education in this country, we stopped teaching kids how to distinguish what is worth reading.  No surprise then that we have also produced a population unable to read.  The two go hand in hand.

Education is a parallel process involving the paradoxical dynamic of learning and thinking.  Paradoxes seem to contradict.  In reality, they complement.  Since both dynamics are inter-related and interdependent, we would error when we focus on one to the exclusion of the other (read: swinging pendulums).  Both cognitions, therefore, need to be engaged in the classroom, both processes equally active.

There will always be tension between the conventional and the creative unless and until the contributions of both are recognized.  Traditionalists identify more with the learning model; innovators lean more towards the thinking model.  Both paradigms, however, if implemented simultaneously, make for a healthier and more holistic educational experience.  Here’s why:

• In math, learning involves computation (e.g. memorizing times tables) while thinking involves application (e.g. doing story problems).
• In language, grammar mechanics must be learned, but creative composition requires thought.
• To learn in history is about what happened; to think in history is about who told you what happened.
• To learn in science means observation; to think in science means experimentation.
• The learner loves to answer questions, the thinker loves to ask questions.
• Following directions is more of a learning dynamic while making decisions is more of a thinking dynamic.

Even with Bloom’s taxonomy, the lower levels (remembering, comprehending, applying) are more learning-oriented, and the higher levels (analyzing, evaluating, creating) are more thinking-oriented.

So because truth is parallel, we are required to view learning and thinking as two sides of the same coin, two edges of the same sword.  When I learn about astronomy, I am “thinking God’s thoughts after Him,” as the legendary astronomer Johannes Kepler once exclaimed when peering at the heavenlies through a crude telescope.

When I was a child, I would incessantly think about football.  I found myself driven to learn everything about it that I could.  Growing up in America’s Dairyland, I’d watch every Packer game, every replay, study their gameplans, read and listen to every word Lombardi ever spoke or wrote, and I’d chew it all over a million times.  The more I learned, the more I thought about it; the more I thought about it, the more I’d want to learn.

Isaac Newton was asked in later life how he developed such startling discoveries as the calculus, the law of gravity and the law of motion. HIs reply:  “By always thinking about them.”

So learning and thinking are not antithetical.  When I learn, I think.  When I think, I learn.  The two dovetail beautifully … or they should.

Someone once asked Charles Haddon Spurgeon, the British Prince of Preachers from yesteryear, how he reconciled God’s sovereignty with human responsibility.  He said, “I don’t – good friends don’t need reconciling.”

In school, as in life, learning and thinking should be good friends. 

Schroeder is the former Wyoming Superintendent of Public Instruction, an ordained minister and founder/president of The ChrisCorps Association (bschroeder081858@gmail.com)