The Power of Mindful Learning by Ellen J. Langer
I received this book one night as I was leaving my friend J's house after our D&D group was wrapping up for the night. A group of us meets weekly with our kids to play D&D, indulge our imaginations, and enjoy the company of our little group. Half the moms at the table are PhD's who have helped me indulge both my creative and whimsical side that has struggled to come out in recent years, and the side of me that constantly craves conversations on more academic topics. This one fortuitous night in J's entry way, I asked about the boxes and bags of books by the door. I had spotted a book I had just listened to the audio of, and was interested in a hard copy to annotate, it was so good (The book was The Abundant Community: Awakening the Power of Families and Neighborhoods by John McKnight and Peter Block.) Turns out, after leaving her teaching position in the Sociology Department after a long career instructing, she was cleaning out her library and all those books were bound for the thrift store, or so she originally thought. About 15 left with me and another handful with our friend Maria, and I have already started digging into her bequeathed stash. This one was the first, and it struck a chord.
After leaving what I personally describe as a poor experience in higher education a few years ago, this book only scratched that wound a bit. It was a validating read. My first question to J after finishing the book was "Why, if we have had this research and data since the 90's, do we not see more evidence of it in our education systems, particularly higher ed where we are dealing with adults and have a little more flexibility to innovate?" Langer, who published this book in 1997, presents seven areas of focus: "basic" or foundational skills, attention, delayed gratification, forgetting, intelligence, and right answers, advocating for mindful, context-aware learning. She unseats a lot of myths that have become so traditionally ingrained in our educational culture that they undermine our ability to learn (and teach) things well. Some of these pervasive myths include the necessity of "basic skills," the pursuit of single "right answers," the effectiveness of rote memorization, and the strict reliance on delayed gratification.
One of my biggest irks throughout both of my experiences in higher education were educators who rely solely on book then test methods of teaching - in other words, relying on the students to engage in rote memorization of the text to learn, instead of teaching the material in a way that makes it engaging and relatable. I had one instructor do this for a class that should have been my favorite, because it combined two of my favorite subjects: psychology and the built environment. For all the time, effort, and tuition I was spending, the course ended up being a disappointment, and the execution of the course felt lazy, like it was a high priority for the instructor. I still have the textbook to appease my own interests, but the class itself and the material "taught" was not memorable. The only meaningful connections with the material made were due to my own personal interest in the topic, and the ways I made the material relatable and was able to add context to the information. The rote memorization nature of the "teaching", in my opinion, is one of the least efficient, effective, or resonant ways to learn, and according to Langer's research as a scientist in the Psychology Department at Harvard, the data agrees.
While I enjoyed every point Langer focuses on in her book, one of the points that stood out to me the most was her emphasis on the need for more play in learning, or at very minimum a recognition that learning can be interesting and fun, and that the work of learning does not have to be an unpleasant chore. One particularly novel Studio class I took during my time in the Interior Architecture and Design department at CSU was taught by a professor who tried with his whole heart and soul to get us to let go of the tedium and stress of "good grades" and to just enjoy the process of learning and exploring our own creativity in the context of the built environment. His teaching philosophy was unlike any other and took some adjusting to, but the knowledge he was able to impart that semester was meaningful and engaging. He was a constant advocate for mindfulness in our work, trying to get us to remove ourselves from the limiting confines of traditional methods of learning in higher education. He is, to this day, a professor I enjoy reaching out to from time to time to check in with. His perspectives on life, education, and work ethic were perspective shifting for me at the time, and I am grateful to know such an interesting educator. I owe him a debt of gratitude for the ways he enriched both my architectural studies and my ways of thinking and working in this world. I still can't say a Parti Diagram is the most useful of tools, but the rest of the lessons were learned and learned well.
While my reading of Langer's book went from engaging with interesting material, to an exercise in processing my past grief associated with my time in the IAD Department at CSU, the knowledge imparted was profoundly resonant with my own life experiences. One of my initial reactions after finishing the book was to consider buying a stack of them for all the staff and teachers at my son's middle school, which is a Design Thinking based curriculum that would be well served by the information contained in Langer's book, but that might be a bit extreme. Instead, I think I'll hand my copy down to the principal and hope it's received as positively as it was with me. I am a big advocate for Design Thinking, and consider it a flexible foundational skill to all other skills that opens doors wider to more possibilities. I would also recommend this book to educators, parents, and anyone interested in the art of mindful learning.
Citations
Langer, E. (1997). The power of mindful learning. De Capo Press.