pride goeth before the learning

Scribbled down on September 6th, 2006 by she
Posted in Learning & Education

“Every act of conscious learning requires the willingness to suffer an injury to one’s self-esteem. That is why young children, before they are aware of their own self-importance, learn so easily; and why older persons, especially if vain or important, cannot learn at all. Pride and vanity can thus be greater obstacles to learning than stupidity.”
– Thomas Stasz

I think this quote says it all. In my experience, adult resistance to learning experiences has far more to do with shifting a person’s internal perceptions of their own worth and fear than it does with time, money, familiarity with technology, or personal life issues. If we want to, we can work around most of these ‘barriers’. The one that is most difficult to surmount is internal. Egos and icons..

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2 Responses to “pride goeth before the learning”

  1. Harold Jarche Says:
    September 7th, 2006 at 12:59 am

    I think that language learning is a prime example of this. It seems that only those who are willing to sound foolish in public will become conversant in another language. “Mature” adults don’t do well 😉

  2. She Says:
    September 8th, 2006 at 12:55 am

    That might explain why I had such difficulty trying to learn Tagalog and Hindi when I was travelling. Granted, I did learn the important words, like tip, water, yes, no, how much?, etc.

    Actually, when I think about it, it was more likely due to sheer laziness on my part. I was all gung-ho to learn the languages, but since everyone spoke English there really wasn’t much in the way of incentive for learning new languages.

    I’m really good at making a fool of myself. I do it pretty much daily.

    I can see how that could come into play with certain personality types – such as my mother and sister…

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