The Devils of Learning

Turn to any book and article on the science of learning, and you would be sure to find the phrase “lifelong learning” embedded somewhere in it. The fundamental message of lifelong learning is that learning can no longer be seen as limited to the schooling years, and one needs to keep the candle of learning burning bright till the last breath. Several reasons can be advanced for this emphasis on an activity that is really an investment for the future. After all, any learning acquired today can only benefit you, materially at least, tomorrow. Let us look at both the reasons why lifelong learning needs to be inculcated by all and what devils plague its widespread adoption.
The sheer explosion of knowledge, across all disciplines, is one of the main reasons why learning cannot be limited to the first couple of decades of our life. There is just too much to know and absorb, and too little time to do it in. The second reason is the interdependence on knowledge across disciplines. You touch a subject of your liking and start tracing some of its branches, and you soon see yourself exploring a totally different subject. From the mechanics of robots, you could soon find yourself studying the science of cognition among humans, and in a few sidesteps needed to understand that, you would be delving into history of civilizations. Learning French cooking may lead you to explore the laws of thermodynamics and plant biology. A yoga class can set you thinking about bio-mechanics and leverage. The human mind is not stopping at any boundaries made by experts of a given field. The third reason is easy access – thanks to the Internet and its ubiquity. Can you credibly explain to a teacher why you could not find a certain book or article on the library shelf? Not any more. From Wikipedia to WikiLeaks, information is being made so easily and affordably accessible that lifelong learning can be one free joyride for all.
The fourth reason for urging people to be lifelong learners is the way careers have evolved over the past few decades. Thanks to the proliferation of careers in a wide range of industries, one no longer has to be wedded to one profession for life. It is not uncommon to find someone changing professions 3 or 4 times on one’s productive life. With every change comes the need to re-equip you with new knowledge. I have a friend who has taught himself sericulture, database management, chemical dyes manufacturing, and legal process outsourcing and education management in the course of 25 years of working. You will find such examples proliferating in this modern world. Your grandfather might have been a steel plant supervisor or an Army officer all his life, but your child is probably going to be in five different professions by the time he/she is ready to hang up his/her boots for good. Finally, the one main reason for choosing to be a lifelong learner is the fact that it keeps you young and wealthy! Yes, people who learn more, earn more. Not only that, they remain fresh and enthusiastic about life much longer, and are able to enjoy the fruits of their success. Pity the soul who stops learning after college is done. Such a person has already written his/her epitaph, and it will not have the word “Happy” or “Wise” on it!
Now let us turn our attention to the Devils of Learning. Why does lifelong learning not come easy, even though its benefits are well recognized now? I would put this down to just three devils – Fear, Arrogance and Lethargy.
Fear is at the root of the desire to limit oneself to a time-boxed period of learning, or in such cases, schooling. We are often afraid of the unknown, and this fear pervades into the field of education very easily. Even within the schooling years, we tend to cut ourselves off from the body of knowledge that appears distant, incomprehensible and incongruous. Once we step out of college, and formal learning comes to an end, this fear multiplies, as we are thrown in a sea of turbulence, with few islands of safety. I have seen many senior professionals closet themselves in their comfort zone, limiting contact with “foreign” bodies of knowledge since they do not know what ignorance such contact might expose. This further leads to their isolation from changing trends and developing fields, which in turn amplifies the latent fears. They avoid going to seminars or conferences. They try and adapt their old and ossified knowledge to the modern world, with usually poor results. Some years ago, till the laptop arrived and made it impossible to escape computer literacy at office or home, CXOs of many organizations looked at the personal computer with unabashed fear. I saw this first hand when I took up an assignment some 20 years ago to train senior management of a large and well established public sector undertaking. The topic, as you might have guessed, was “Making life easy with computers”!
The second devil of Arrogance often comes riding on the first. For those in positions of power, arrogance becomes an easy sin. They can order people around to acquire knowledge for them, they can survive in the corridors of corporate power by abusing their authority and they can hide their ignorance behind their easy arrogance. Some even unhesitatingly provide patently wrong facts and data with such bluff confidence that others around them desist from checking things out for themselves. Often, the feudal nature of organizations helps perpetrate this arrogant Circle of Ignorance. The boss mouths an erroneous statement with supreme confidence and chutzpah, his subordinates lap it up as gospel truth and run their errands based on it, and by the time some flunky low down the pecking order finds out the real facts, his voice is conveniently lost in the hubbub of the daily routine. Arrogant managers can very easily neutralize such truth seekers, and continue to build fortresses on their islands of ignorance. Lifelong learning remains a distant and detested enemy to such arrogant people.
Finally we turn to the third devil – Lethargy. Often cloaked under the veil of extreme preoccupation and easy procrastination, this devil is the most common reason for staying away from lifelong learning. Each one of us has done this many times in our lives – postponed acquiring new knowledge citing being extremely busy handling our daily chores. I have wanted to become more proficient in Spanish and French, two languages I picked up during my sojourns in Mexico and France, but despite enough opportunities, I have let this dream remain one. In fact, if there ever was a Nobel for Procrastination, Yours Truly would very much be in the reckoning. Lethargy is not necessary laziness. In our own current fields, we are running around and winning battles, and rejoicing our victories. Yet, when it comes to investing in the future, we find all the right excuses why something cannot be done now. Tomorrow, certainly! Today, not even a Maybe!
Well, such is life, and we have to deal with it. However, lest I start showing my ignorance on the subject (Fear), let me decide to end this post right here (Arrogance) and promise to write another article on “How to deal with the three Devils” in the very near future (Lethargy). How’s that for a really devilish me? Thank God I am not a certified Lifelong Learner!

The Future of Individual Learning

It is said that the knowledge society we live in today relentlessly punishes the under-educated and the under-prepared. The evidence of this statement is all around us to see. In developing countries, a fair percentage of a family’s income is spent on educating its children. Why is this so? One can safely say that if one were to leave out the top 2% of the population of a developing country, as measured by their economic status, the rest of the population is trying hard to educate itself, in the belief that it will lead them to a better tomorrow. This strong urge to be “educated” and “prepared” for the future has its pluses and minuses. On the positive side, it leads to improvements in the aspirational levels in youth, lowering of crime rates and improvements in the standards of living. On the flip side, it creates an intense pressure on children and parents, with many of them going to undue lengths to get admission into brand name institutions and courses. The fallout of this mad scramble for “quality” education leads us to many ills, such as cheating in exams, leaking of national entrance test papers, buying of college seats through touts, suicides on failure to secure admission, etc.

Given the paucity of seats in quality institutions in a vast, developing country like India, there is a whole tutoring and coaching industry that has now become one of the biggest sources of income for a large number of individual tutors and coaching institutes. So much so, there are coaching institutes to train students to get into more successful (read “famous”) coaching institutes! Some cities like Kota in Rajasthan and Hyderabad in Andhra Pradesh have become de facto coaching factories for students wanting to secure a seat in the premier institutions of the country. Many families endure 2 to 4 years of separation from their children, since they have to travel hundreds and thousands of miles away from their hometowns to live in these cities and get better “prepared” for that one competitive exam that will decide their future.

However, if one were to talk to many parents of such students, they are not a happy lot. Many of them feel trapped – they have committed a lot of upfront money to a coaching institute, their child is not able to cope with life away from home, his performance in the coaching classes and assessment tests is not showing any improvement, and he is missing his regular school classes as well. Yet they do not have the courage of pulling their ward out of the situation, hoping against hope that things might change for the better.

It is said that whenever there is simmering discontent in any market, there are opportunities bubbling just beneath the surface. Today, thanks to the convergence of a few factors, such parents and their wards could be ready to experiment with a new method of coaching – the Stay@Home model of self-paced, self-driven learning. What are these factors? Let us enumerate them.

1. The deep penetration of broadband internet across all parts of India.

2. The general discontent among a large section of students with the kind of herd mentality that drives them to a few “named” coaching institutes, far away from home.

3. The constant changes in the entrance test format and pattern by the testing authorities.

4. The high total cost, both financial and emotional, of enduring years of away-from-home coaching.

5. The emergence of smart e-learning platforms that make self-help learning far more effective than possible earlier.

The last-named factor is what some nimble coaching institutes are beginning to exploit to their, and the student’s advantage. Imagine the several benefits to a coaching institute that accrue from migrating some of their programmes to such platforms:

a. Better utilization of the most critical resource – good faculty

b. Ease of managing content – from creation to dissemination

c. Improvement in quality of student engagement – through a medium that the student enjoys using the most

d. Full control over the business functions – from student enrollment & fee collection to IP (Intellectual Property) protection & profit maximization

e. Easier scalability of operations without having to expand brick and mortar infrastructure – classroom space, power, air-conditioning, printed material, etc.

At the other end, here are some clear benefits to the student:

a. The physical and emotional comfort of studying at home

b. The ability to pace oneself based on one’s grasping ability and circumstances

c. Ease of reviewing a lecture and taking assessments when one is ready for them

d. A rich multi-media experience (of the same content from the same great coaching institute) to make concepts clearer

e. Better balance between school studies and coaching “classes”

f. Last but not the least, a much lower financial burden on the family.

The cultural shift that is needed to make independent, individual learning a more common phenomenon is already taking place. From schools to colleges to companies, systems are rewarding those who take responsibility for their own growth and development. Blaming the environment, the system, the teachers, the technology is no more fashionable. This is seen as more of a loser’s excuse. The bold and the brave are expected to take charge of their own destiny, and design their own path to success than just follow the crowd.

Whenever there is a disruptive force in any market, the early adopters of a new, revolutionary solution are not those who are sitting pretty. It is usually those who are in some way discontented with the current situation. So it is my calculated hunch that the new ways of delivering and consuming coaching and training services will find early takers among students who are less than satisfied with the “Kota” experience and among tutors and coaching institutes who are grappling with faculty shortage and dwindling student interest. Once this early wave of adopters tastes success (and there is enough evidence to show that this is happening), the more established and comfortable players – both Knowledge Providers and Knowledge Consumers – will jump onto the bandwagon too. From the iPod to Facebook, it is always the bold, brave, early adopter who makes a great idea come alive.

The rest, as they say, is always history!

Till we meet another idea again.

Pramod.

Technology is a great leveller

Few decades ago when I was preparing for the IIT JEE, I had little choice in getting the help I needed to compete against the best and brightest in India. The best teachers and coaching centers were located in big cities and I couldn’t afford to relocate and sign-up with those institutions.

Fast forward to present and we have spread of internet and communication technology and easy access to computers. However, the best teachers are concentrated in big cities and ambitious, bright students in far-flung places still have to do it on their own or travel to the physical locations of great teachers to receive the coaching required. There are also highly talented teachers in small cities and towns who can’t reach out to vast majority of students.

E-learning is to the rescue. With sea-change in infrastructure, we at Quampus determined to bring the best teachers to the students spread all over the country. Learning Management Systems are nothing new in terms of technology. But we are trying to build scalable, accessible and affordable solutions for millions of students and teachers, something never done before.

We are trying to create a level-playing field – an e-learning platform where knowledge providers and knowledge seekers come together for an immersive learning experience.