Can Learning Be The Key to Happiness?
How true learning can promote happiness and longevity of the mind
As an educator I would answer this question with a definitive yes, do I practise it is another question. However, I do believe that learning can reap priceless jewels that you thought you would never attain. Being curious, I have discussed this question plenty of times with my students. Their first initial reaction was to coil up against the rhetoric they receive that learning is important and to turn their back at school is to turn their back at learning. Yet, if the only person who can tell you what happiness is yourself then surely the same applies for learning. A student will only learn if they intrinsically accept, are motivated and take ownership of the context in order to go through the process of learning.
Due to the average life expectancy ever increasing in the west there have never been more generations living together than now. With that, brings confusion, miscommunication and misunderstanding. Generation Z are the Digital Natives of society that we are still getting to know and understand. It is common though that teachers tend to teach how they were taught. An example of this could be the insistence of reading books which is often met by resilience. Although I love reading, it’s medium has declined and enforcing their importance (which is sometimes unfamiliar and alien)might deter the student from making the intrinsic decision to learn.
When talking about true learning it is not confined in school walls. Infact, it can be quite the opposite due to the levels of conformity and pressure given. I believe that true learning is a journey that only the individual can decide to apply, dedicate and focus themselves on in order to be skilled at the craft they are passionate about.
I investigated this issue further by interviewing various people from different nationalities of Generation Z ranging from 15 to 22 with the question: Who or what taught you what you are passionate about? Passions ranged from: musical instruments; singing; mastering a game; various forms of artwork such as tattoo design; mechanics; surfing; figuring out rubik’s cubes etc. However, there was a resounding singular answer that came out of the discussions- Youtube!
This is not to paint YouTube in rosey tinted glasses because it does create distraction, which deters from learning, but it does highlight that school or education does not have a monopoly on learning in the 21st century. To its merit it can be a wonderful thing. For example, an eight year old student completed two rubik’s cubes at the same time in each hand in under two minutes. Yes, it may have been a parlor trick that Youtubers have unraveled but if I had seen it when I was growing up he would have been considered a genius. For a time, YouTube gave him a sense of accomplishment through perseverance and focus, to a task I had thought impossible, that led him to a mastering of a craft and a temporal sense of happiness.
I began to draw to personal conclusions that learning leads to happiness when I looked at learning that takes place outside of the classroom. An example of this, which could be seen as the greatest lesson, is that of bringing life into this world. Although I am unfortunately not a parent, conversing with friends and family leads to a conclusion that it is the hardest job as there is no right way. Afterall, however much our parents love us, they will mess us up somehow. To many their children are their greatest source of happiness. An adventure they have undertaken, which has been strenuous, heartbreaking and downright annoying but they are forever learning, adapting and rising to the challenges with never giving up.
Personally speaking, a good template of true learning would be Joseph Campbell’s ‘The Hero’s Journey’. Sadly, I will not go into the details of this wonderful depiction(although I have left a link for a brilliant and brief TedEd video) of a monomyth that runs as Campbell states in all stories, but it does depict the common trials, tribulations and rewards that the hero(us) attain through our learning adventure. Travelling companies have even adopted using the Hero’s Journey template in its marketing as well because they have identified that travelling is a learning experience that derives joy. As humans we look for purpose,creative achievement and transcendence that can only take place if we open up our minds to learn. Our minds are like any muscle though, with it’s exercise being to learn, and when we close our eyes as adults with jaded cynicism (the idea that we’ve seen it all before) life can vanish before us. We are creatures of habit and negative ones can doom us if we do not learn from them.
Like many of us, I have experienced the decay of a loved one’s mind who is suffering from dementia or Alzheimers. I would spend time with my great grandmother Maria who every five minutes would ask who I or my mother were. Briefly recognising and welcoming us with a swell of emotion only for her eyes to glaze over again. Her only anchor to the world were cemented memories of childhood where she would suddenly start singing Catalan rhymes she had learnt as a child. This is a common feature in Alzheimer’s patients and I cannot help but think the reason for the memories to be encoded throughout a lifetime is that childhood is when learning is taking place the most.
The acquisition of language, attaining skills and documenting unforgettable experiences can still be replicated in adulthood however we bring with it the weight and fossilisation of the past and future anxieties that can bring our minds out from the moment of now. Being in the moment is when our mind is firing and creating new neural pathways that shape our futures and colour our pasts. When we lock ourselves out with statements such as: ‘Same shit different day’ we are coding our minds to think the same where they are locked into a repetitive automotive mode that makes the years indistinguishable from one another.
Concluding, I do believe that learning is the key to happiness although it is taking action that is key which I try to tell myself everyday. However, schools and education need to start reassessing and modernising the practise and implementation of learning.
Students learn from an abundance of sources today where what we constitute as learning they will not. With the age of the internet they have been thrown millions of shrieking gurus all claiming for their attention and monthly subscriptions and education needs to take a facilitator’s role in guiding them through the digital storms so they can choose their own learning journey. Parents and schools can pressure tech companies in providing platforms that will not distract but aid learning. For example, YouTube could have an offshoot platform that mirrors Khan Academy. E.g. YouTube for Schools that only has educational content with Rubrik’s Cube videos and all.
Education can start creating syllabuses that ask for students to create the criteria of success with the collaboration of the teacher so that they can take ownership of their work and be intrinsically motivated and passionate to learn. The art of reading a book and that knowledge is procedural and not immediate can be implemented. However, the student must pick the book up themselves.
2020 has brought a new age with it but it is an opportunity to pause, re-evaluate, assess and take action. Happiness is an obsession we have had throughout the ages with countries such as Bhutan prioritising the currency of Gross Domestic Happiness. I believe that schools are a perfect playing ground to implement the priority of GDH through the vehicle of true learning, but first we must unshackle ourselves from 20th century methodologies and embrace the 21st.
