Years ago I worked as an RN in a physical rehab hospital. Patients would come to the hospital for one to several weeks following health events that impaired their function in some way. That is, they would come following a stroke, a cardiac event e.g. MI or heart surgery, orthopedic surgery on their knee or leg, or following an accident in which their mobility was impaired. There were other reasons why they came, but all came with the intent and expectation of receiving rehabilitation therapy to help them return to a level of activity and function similar to, if not the same as, what they were doing prior to the event.

Now, physical therapy is an active process. Just as you must get on the basketball court and shoot hoops to improve your skills, or go to the gym and lift weights to build strength and muscle, to regain the strength, mobility and so on that you had previously had, you need to get off your butt and do the work. Not everyone understood that. It was not uncommon for a patient to come in, lie down in the hospital bed and essentially say, “rehab me!” while doing nothing to move in that direction. They complained about the need to do the exercises. They complained about the repetition. They always seemed to find some excuse to get out of going to therapy. Many even put visitors ahead of their therapy. Rather than saying, “I’m here to do therapy to get stronger, so, while I appreciate your visit, I have work to do.” They would tell the therapist “later, I have company”. That’s not how you accomplish your rehab goals.

The fact is, if you don’t put in the work, you won’t get better. And you have to do it consistently. Once is not enough.

As I thought about those patients I recognized that many students, and people in general, take that same approach to learning. They want the knowledge and skills that are being taught, but don’t want to do the work of building that knowledge or developing those skills. They want to sit passively in their chair and be taught. And, unfortunately, I think society has created that situation. After all, we send kids to school and from day one they are encouraged to sit quietly while the teacher ’teaches’. Then they’re handed worksheets to complete and which are usually graded. But, the student hasn’t had a chance to use the skills and knowledge needed to complete those worksheets, so they don’t do well on those assignments. This, of course, is quite discouraging.

There is a fairly significant amount of research that suggests that the more active the learner is, that is the more fully engaged they are in creating their own learning, the more likely they are to grasp the material. Getting student to learn by doing, giving them challenging (but achievable) tasks stimulates them to work out the solution for themselves. To me – and I think the data support this – the most effective way to learn is through discovery. Rather than telling me how to solve a problem, let me grapple with it a bit and try to work out my own solution. Guide me, but let me do the work. Give me hints when I get stuck, but don’t give me the answer. Why do it this way? Because I am more likely to remember the solution when I create it myself than if I’m simply given it.

The challenge with this type of learning, though, is that it may take longer. And that generally doesn’t sit well with the ‘higher ups’. They want students to move through system quickly and efficiently with minimal friction, learning be damned.

The payoff of that slower, discovery approach is that the student typically retains more of what they learn along the way and generally end up being better able to apply what they learn to new situations. Whether they obtain all of the information (notice I did not say ‘knowlege’) that is expected is, to me, irrelevant. Using this process the student is developing the skills needed to find that information when it is needed.

I love to learn new things. I’m always tinkering with technology to expand my knowledge and understanding of how things work and how to accomplish things. I’m always reading – philosophy, education, technology (of course!) and whatever else I can get my hands on. I may not remember everything I read and may, in fact, have no real use for that information, but it’s available to me if and when I do need it.

But my point here is that none of this is passive. It’s active. Because learning is not a passive process. You can’t learn to play basketball by sitting in the bleachers. You’ve got to get out on the court and play! You can’t learn to drive a car by reading a book or watching someone else. You’ve got to get behind the wheel. We intuitively understand these things but when it comes to “school” we suddenly think that simply sitting in class and listening to a lecture is sufficient. It’s not. We’ve got to jump into the game and actively work to learn. Because learning is not a spectator sport.