learning how to learn how to learn. phew.
I’m two weeks in. my thursday nights feel like an episode of community.
in between learning (faking) grant writing skills, i’m cramming my sidebag with books on the digital divide and learning in public libraries. i’m trying to figure out how many people have already answered my questions: how are libraries supporting informal and self-directed learning? how is adult education addressing the digital divide?
here is what i know: i know that public libraries play a huge role in informal learning for adults on the wrong side of the digital divide. if you don’t have a computer and can’t afford the internet, there is a good likelihood that you are also not gainfully employed, not a university graduate, and/or english is not your first language (and judging by how i just mis-spelled “enghishl” for a moment there, i’m thinking it might not be my first language today either).
i can’t say for certain where else folks are learning basic digital literacies. i know some adults are going to college and continuing education, but many can’t afford this route. i know a lot of adults are coming to the library to seek impromptu one-to-one tutoring, and this can be a little infuriating for everyone.
at my library i meet a lot of people who already have a really low tolerance for frustration around computers, and who aren’t terribly willing to understand that library staff have limited availability (yes, the library is actually a really busy place. we might not be sweating from the physical strain of it, but we are expected to do a lot with relatively little staffing and with very high expectations all around). often the help we can offer is a free course that starts in two months and is already full. admittedly not super helpful. we’ve got instructional dvds, visual and plain-language how-to books, and other methods for self-study. sometimes, when there’s no queue at the reference desk, we’ve got the time to come over and help an individual for five or twenty minutes – but even this is not enough.
i think part of the problem is that self-directed learning does not come easy or naturally to many adults. many of us are just not exploratory people. after all, it’s frustrating to be alone with your own failures— er, learning process.
so now i’m wondering, is this part of the public library’s mandate? should we be teaching folks how to teach themselves? we are all about non-coercive learning, and teaching how-to-learn sounds suspiciously like school. i work at a public library and not a school because i want to avoid this sort of thing. i have pretty high hopes for humanity’s innate ability to learn, and i find traditional schooling to be oppressive to the learner. people want to learn. some people take longer than others to want to, and not everyone wants to learn the same things. we definitely don’t all learn with the same methods.
because we are each individual learners, classrooms don’t work. it doesn’t matter if someone teaches you, you have to do the learning. i heard all through high school how school was about “teaching you how to learn”, but all it ever taught me was how to skip class, smoke cigarettes and lie. and i know some folks have really positive school experiences, and that the model somehow works for them. i am going to go out on an unsupported-by-science limb and speculate that the folks coming into the library having never used a mouse before were not taught how to learn.
so how can we support individual learners? yes, we provide the tools for study (books, media, and internet access). staff also provide a little bit of help. but how accessible are we really making these tools if learners don’t know how use them?
time to go read.
>> composed to a soundtrack of sonic youth, neutral milk hotel, and snoop doggy dogg and the fuel of delicious jj bean coffee.
are for use 