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Theories of Learning
How do we learn?
Theories have been expounded through the ages in attempts to explain the process of acquiring knowledge. The ancients formed theories consistent with their philosophies and in terms of their particular culture.
More recent thinkers tried to veer away from the completely abstract interpretations in favor of answers which could be better related to tangible evidence. Modern psychologists have been concerned with establishing a physiological basis for their theories.
They are circumspect in conducting careful experiments and tabulating results with mathematical exactitude, determined to meet the requirements of a scientific age. Others, particularly in the field of education, indicate that they find the human element somewhat elusive in their laboratory and add to their interpretations consideration of social environment and personality factors.
Since people who promulgate theories have a noticeable tendency to gather evidence supporting their particular beliefs, there is a strong case made for nearly every school of thought. However, there is an undeniable degree of similarity among the varied points of view.
The basic fact they have in common is the simple truth that man does learn. He learns from the moment he is born. He learns through direct and indirect means, through formal and informal instruction. Sometimes he learns in spite of instruction. Sometimes he applies himself assiduously with discouraging results and other times he suddenly knows with little or no apparent effort. Sometimes he learns to be socially useful, sometimes he acquires skills which are adjudged harmful and negative. But he learns.
Non-human animals learn too, and rats and dogs have contributed greatly to the formation of theories of learning. Machines have been devised to take over many of our thinking processes but the business of learning goes on in one form or another, in the course of growing and participating in life.
But, how do we learn?
True to his principles, Socrates thought of learning and of knowledge as part of universal and eternal verities. For him, man was simply an example of the truth of eternal knowledge. But the mechanism behind man's personal awareness of this knowledge was something that Socrates did not attempt to explain.
For Plato the idea was supreme; only reason counted for anything. As for experience, it was merely a shadow of the idea of reality. Sensations and opinions, he held, are passing and unreliable. The immaterial essences— Forms or Ideas—were absolute for him, containing the only ultimate truth.
While the Greeks are philosophically stimulating, they fail to answer our question. However, we must consider the culture which produced such theories. Here was a society in which the individual counted for little, in which slaves were bought and sold, in which human life was cheaply held.
As a result, a philosophy developed which expressed the need for security and permanence. Almost inevitably, on the basis of this explanation, abstract ideals of truth which exist above and beyond the individual were developed as absolutes.
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