Learning by Accident and Learning
on Purpose
How children learn
will determine their success. There are two ways to learn:
learning by accident and learning on purpose. Learning on purpose
is the most effective. Learning by accident is groping and
hoping for a satisfactory outcome. Learning by accident eventually
gets the job done, but it takes too long and could even be
dangerous. Take the story of a child that places a hand on
a hot surface because no one has told him an object was hot.
How much precious time, and the consequences, do you want to
spend groping and learning by accident?
There is another way
to approach learning on purpose, and that is through Operant
Conditioning. It gets the job done, gets it done faster, gets
you moving in the right direction and gets you to your destination.
Everyone eventually
arrives at the learning destination, but there is a right way
and a long way. Which way do you choose? If you don’t
like what you’re doing or where you are, then change
it. The problem with most people is they spend their entire
lives learning how not to do something. That certainly is one
way of learning, but it takes too long and then they spend
their remaining years in regret.
Learning can be on
purpose or by accident. It’s a choice. How should your
children spend their time? As I said before, the clocks are
ticking. There are no time outs (Villars, 1968). |
