Sean-Ward.com

A short post about the act of learning versus the act of being taught.

I was driving on my way back from lunch, and I had caught the beginning of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine before I left the apartment. They had recently encountered an alien of an unknown race whose ship was beginning to fall apart after exiting the nearby wormhole. Using the tractor beam, they targeted and enveloped the sip and started to bring it in, as the tractor beam added stability to the failing ship’s hull. Dax suggested skipping normal first contact procedure, which Sisko agreed with, but he sent O’Brien to the docking bay to greet the alien, as O’Brien did something (I missed this part) that probably saved the alien’s live and would make everything seem less dangerous. As Deep Space Nine is next to a wormhole, it’s not too surprising that an alien of an unknown race would randomly appear. Right before the opening credits began, Sisko wondered out loud what it was that the alien seemed so afraid of.

I considered this on the way out the door. The alien was afraid, so he could be fleeing any number of things, including a repressive government, another hostile of some sort, of participated in an experiment and was surprised to have lived. He could also have banished himself because he carried a sickness and no was going to possibly harm others, or he comes from a culture where they have found themselves to be the only creatures in their galaxy, and encountering someone else was a deep shock.

However, I thought of how this could work as a type of subterfuge. An alien race comes pretending to be on the run from some thing, and in appearing weak, the alien gains the confidence of those who rescued him. The rescuers help him out, and he is able to observe and tell them information in exchange for the help. The information could be offered with no promise of help even. The alien is in reality an operative who is sowing the seeds for a later invasion. This is the way a race of human descendants in an episode of Stargate managed to control earth in an alternate future: we met them, they promised wonderful things, and before the people of Earth knew it, they were headed down a path that they could not leave. These “friends” had extended the life span of the average Earthling to 200 years, but unnoticed went the fact that the people of Earth were becoming sterile. As the health of the Earthlings was being monitored by the aliens because of their advanced medicine, no Earthling was aware. Using the magic of the Stargate, they sent a message into the past to prevent the meeting of the this alien race.

Being given something for free. The alien could lead to it, and the human descended race did it to conquer other races. I’m sure I was aware of the concept when watching the plot unfold in Stargate, or when reading similar scifi stories, such as the farcasters and cruciform in the Hyperion series by Dan Simmons. Despite that, I did not give the concept much thought until now.

It’s like the old saying “Give a man a fish, he eats for a day. Teach a man to fish, he eats for a lifetime.” While that’s true, you need to consider that phrase, as I think it should read differently. This puts the burden of responsibility on the teacher, whereas it should probably be split evenly between the teacher and the student. So, if you consider assisting someone with a problem, remember the above quote, but if you are the one who needs the help, perhaps “Ask for a fish, you eat for one day. Ask to be taught how to fish, you can feed yourself for a lifetime.”

Placing the responsibility of learning a skill on the teacher allows for the teacher (i.e., the educated) to repress or control those they do not feel deserve the knowledge, as well as makes the teacher/educated feel better than the students. A student would then possibly not understand some of the fundamental basics, but simply accept them as fact.

This is the difference between going into any experience and expecting to learn something and expecting to be taught something. If you are learning something, you are taking an active role in the process, possibly forcing the teacher to give you what you want, whereas if you are being taught something, you expect that everything you need to know will be given to you and that is all you need. What you won’t get from being taught something are the heuristics you might otherwise develop which you would need to solve problems when they occur later. By being taught, you aren’t building an understanding of the subject, but you are simply acquiring the results of someone else’s learning.

I think that’s why it’s called the “learning process” and not the “being taught process”. The sooner you realize that, the better.

I know when I first had to go on a malware appointment for work, I had went out and found things I would need to look for and talked to people who had done them to get an understanding of what they saw and did. However, I was actively searching for the information, and then I applied that and saw why others had done certain things. From this, I also learned tricks for dealing with malware threats that I encountered later. Now, here is the issue. For work, I’ve had to try and pass this information down to our student staff, typically through a training session. Not everyone that was there was attempting to learn what they needed to do; they were there to be taught, and I believe that the ones who were there to learn got more out of it. One staff member, after training, felt that she needed assistance with making sure she understood everything, and I went with her on some appointments to go over what needed to be done and why. I feel that following this, she preformed much better than she otherwise would have. The reason for this increase in performance: she wanted to learn.

So, what am I getting at, what’s the point of this? I thought about it, and I realized that I want to learn things, but I also want others to appreciate the act of learning and not expect the act of being taught. I think this is something that people need to consider. Look out into the future; that great unknown that awaits us. If the majority of our people are being taught and are not learning, we are heading for trouble. By “our people”, I don’t mean those of the United States, but the people of the world.