Ask Quesitons!
Life Is a Learning Process
I Saw Him Jump
Any Other Letters?
Learning
Hole In One
Common Sense
How we learn:
That’s Not Jade
Head Knowledge
Quotes
Topic : Learning
Donald Grey Barnhouse
I recall the comment of the late Dr. Donald Grey Barnhouse, pastor, Tenth Presbyterian Church, Philadelphia, who said, “If I had only three years to serve the Lord, I would spend two of them studying and preparing.”
Dallas Seminary will not be insensitive to the economic struggles and time demands of our students. But this does not mean we will lose the reputation of being a place where the diligent study of the Scriptures occurs.
As C. S. Lewis declared:
If all the world were Christian it might not matter if all the world were uneducated. But a cultural life will exist outside the Church whether it exists inside or not. To be ignorant and simple now—not to be able to meet the enemies on their own ground—would be to throw down our weapons, and betray our uneducated brethren who have no defense but us against intellectual attacks of the heathen.
Good philosophy must exist, if for no other reason, because bad philosophy needs to be answered. The cool intellect must work not only against cool intellect on the other side, but against muddy heathen mysticisms which deny intellect altogether. Most of all, perhaps, we need intimate knowledge of the past. The learned life is then, for some, a duty.
Ask Quesitons!
A Father and his small son were out walking one day when the lad asked how electricity could go through the wires stretched between the telephone poles. “I don’t know,” said his father. “I never knew much about electricity.”
A few blocks farther on, the boy asked what caused lightning and thunder. “That too has puzzled me,” came the reply. The youngster continued to inquire about many things, none of which the father could explain.
Finally, as they were nearing home, the boy said, “Pop, I hope you didn’t mind all those questions.” “Not at all,” replied his father. “How else are you going to learn!”
Life Is a Learning Process
Life is a learning process, as this beautiful bit of free verse by Veronica A. Shoffstall tells us:
After a while you learn the subtle difference
Between holding a hand and chaining a soul,
And you learn that love doesn’t mean leaning
And company doesn’t mean security.
And you begin to learn that kisses aren’t contracts
And presents aren’t promises,
And you begin to accept your defeats
With your head up and your eyes open
With the grace of a woman, not the grief of a child,
And you learn to build all your roads on today
Because tomorrow’s ground is too uncertain for plans
And futures have a way of falling down in mid-flight.
After a while you learn
That even sunshine burns if you get too much.
So you plant your garden and decorate your own soul,
Instead of waiting for someone to bring you flowers.
And you learn that you really can endure...
That you really are strong
And you really do have worth...
And you learn and learn...
With every good-bye you learn.
I Saw Him Jump
Two pals are sitting in a pub watching the eleven-o’clock news. A report comes on about a man threatening to jump from the 20th floor of a downtown building. One friend turns to the other and says, “I’ll bet you ten bucks the guy doesn’t jump.”
“It’s a bet,” agrees his buddy.
A few minutes later, the man on the ledge jumps, so the loser hands his pal a $10 bill. “I can’t take your money,” his friend admits. “I saw him jump earlier on the six-o’clock news.”
“Me, too,” say the other buddy. “But I didn’t think he’d do it again!”
Any Other Letters?
On a crisp Minnesota fall afternoon, my four-year-old son was helping me rake leaves in the front yard of our farmhouse. I glanced up just in time to see a flock of geese flying over and pointed out how they flew in a formation shaped like a “V.”
He patiently watched them as they disappeared over the horizon and then turning to me asked, “Do they know any other letters?”
Learning
Learning usually passes through three states:
1. In the beginning you learn the right answers.
2. In the second state you learn the right questions.
3. In the third and final stage you learn which questions are worth asking.
Hole In One
Hoagy Carmichael, the story goes, once decided to take up golf. Lessons were arranged with an instructor. At the first session Carmichael was patiently shown the basics of the game: how to hold the club, How to stand, how to swing, etc.
Finally, after a half hour of this, the instructor felt Carmichael was ready to drive a few toward the first hole. The ball was teed up. Hoagy stepped up to it, swung, then watched the ball sail down the fairway, bound onto the green and roll into the cup—a hole in one!
The instructor was dumbfounded. Hoagy flipped the club to a caddy with a jaunty motion, then turned to the still speechless instructor. “OK,” he said casually, “I think I’ve got the idea now.”
Common Sense
Admiral Hyman G. Rickover, father of the nuclear submarine, was skeptical of business school graduates. Having interviewed some 14,000 of them over a period of years, he found them fluent in the jargon of systems analysis, financial manipulation, and quantitative management (whatever that is). But he claimed that they just don’t know the score. He felt most of them had an unrealistic impression of what is involved in business and little appreciation of the importance of technical knowledge, experience, and hard work. “What it takes to do the job will not be learned from management courses,” said Rickover. “It is principally a matter of experience, the proper attitude, and common sense—none of which can be taught in a classroom.”
How we learn:
1% through taste
1.5% through touch
3.5% through smell
11% through hearing
83% through sight
That’s Not Jade
A Chinese boy who wanted to learn about jade went to study with a talented old teacher. This gentleman put a piece of the stone into the youth’s hand and told him to hold it tight. Then he began to talk of philosophy, men, women, the sun, and almost everything under it. After an hour he took back the stone and sent the boy home. The procedure was repeated for weeks. The boy became frustrated—when would he be told about jade?—but he was too polite to interrupt his venerable teacher.
Then one day when the old man put a stone into his hands, the boy cried out instantly, “That’s not jade!”
Head Knowledge
Sounds crazy, but at least one educator is singing the praise of a revolutionary new teaching process. It’s simple: posters on bathroom walls. An instructor at the State University of New York conducted an educational experiment by hanging cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) posters in “strategic places” in dormitory bathrooms.
His findings? Those who read the posters averaged nearly 25 percent higher scores on CPR tests than the control group. Also, students in the bathroom poster group who had never received CPR training scored as well on a techniques test as those who had received classroom teaching. The instructor next plans to install Heimlich choking maneuver posters in selected stalls. All of which lends new meaning to the term “head knowledge.”
Quotes
- Old Boy’s Law: you don’t learn anything the second time you’re kicked by a mule.
- Tell me; I’ll forget. Show me; I may remember. But involve me and I’ll understand. - Chinese proverb
