On Becoming a Well Rounded Learner
Or Filling in the Gaps Left by Our Education
Throughout my years in school, I was convinced that I was not made for Math and Science. I never thought of myself as being all that bad at either subject, but I was always told that I had a mind for subjects like ELA and Social Studies; AKA, the Humanities. Which checks out, seeing that I went on to double major in Philosophy & Religion, and English during my undergrad.
To me this seemed natural because I tended to enjoy them so much more. Something about the open ended ideas and lack of finality brought, and still brings, a sense of creativity and wit to learning that my Math and Science classes, at the time, did not.
From there I followed the advise of teachers and peers alike and focused most of my academic efforts towards what I was best at, and thought of the rest as something to merely complete rather than try to excel.
This leaves me with the issue I would like to talk about today, the fact that many of us experienced a lopsided education wherein we were told to focus mainly on what we were initially inclined to, and what we can do about it as adults.
How Does This Happen?
As a teacher, I can see how this happens. Both parents and teachers, for the most part, just want what's best for the child. If a student is excelling at something, we want to encourage and guide them down the path that brings them success, and when they struggle, it's easy to fall into telling them not to worry, and focus on bolstering their strengths rather than rectifying their weaknesses. This is the path of least resistance, and for some kids, it seems like the best way forward.
This is also perpetuated by the profit driven hyper-specialization at the end of the road for students. The fact of the matter is that when a student leaves high school, they are entering an expensive world. It is not uncommon to see education as merely a vehicle towards a career later in life. We are told to get good grades in order to get into a good college, in order to get a good job, in order to support ourselves and our loved ones. We ask students frequently what they want to do when they grow up and seemingly send them down a pipeline towards it. I don't believe this is out of any anti-intellectual malice, but rather a very real understanding of how life works. We do need to support ourselves, and it's much easier to land a job that can help with that if we start young.
Why This is an Issue
The issue is created once we realize the vast gaps this creates in our knowledge base as adults. While it's clear that we simply can't become experts in every field, we do have both a moral and civic obligation to make sure we have a strong and diverse foundation.
My focus, as I've stated, has historically been the humanities, though in the past few years I've tried to work more and more with mathematics and the sciences in order to make sure I can participate responsibly in conversations about the world around me. The humanities- literature, philosophy, history, and the like- offer us the skills needed to understand the experiences of the people around us. To put into perspective the events we see and experience, and to know what is right and wrong. They create a foundation for our critical thinking that allows us to more fully interact with its namesake, being human. This alone however, would still leave us ignorant to fundamental understandings of how the world works.
An education in STEM helps us to know the physical world: what it can do, and what it's comprised of, while the Humanities helps us to reckon with the implications and what that means for the people in it. Science and Mathematics are the foundation for everything considered in the humanities, one should not feel confident in one without a relative confidence in the other.
Along with a broader foundation, we better our ability to think, not only deeply and critically, but independently. As referenced in a previous post, a well rounded education allows us to consider freely, breaking from the need to have the world interpreted by others. I've been watching the Crash Course series on Navigating Digital Literacy, which I do recommend, and have been thinking about the vast diversity in information given to us on a daily basis.
I don't fully condemn social media, though I am wary. While I think it has, or had, the potential to be a positive platform of free information, you'll sooner find landmines of misinformation than goldmines of truth.
Having that strong foundation helps us to sniff out falsehoods, and to keep ourselves safe from spreading misinformation ourselves.
How to Fill in Your Gaps
Now that the problem is better understood, we should look towards how to reconcile this in ourselves.
But before we do so, a note: finding and rooting out our ignorances is a lifelong task. Again, we will never become experts in anything and should never feel as though we have. We should also understand this to be a personal goal and never attempt to "help" by pointing out the gaps in other peoples knowledge. The job of a learner is not to point out other deficits, but to discover and remedy our own.
A recommendation for reconciliation is too look back at when the problem was most likely to have began. Cut your ego at the knees and turn to high school standards. Think back to the highest level classes your high school offered and start there. The AP courses are great foundational goals to achieve in any subject. On top of this, there are an incredible amount of resources that will help to aid you along the way. I recommend Khan Academy and Crash Course; they both have an incredible catalogue of quality courses and supplements.
Another recommendation I have is to build a skill tree. I made a post a while ago that goes in depth about making a personal skill tree and how it can be used to understand foundations before branching out into various, more specialized subjects.
But most of all I recommend following your passions and your curiosity. The reason I became more interested in Science and Mathematics after years of neglect was because of the intersection I found between philosophy and physics. After wanting to branch further into the physical nature of the world, I realized that if I ever wanted to truly get anywhere, I had to fill in these glaring gaps. Read broadly, relentlessly, and voraciously. You'll never reach the bottom of the well, and you will always find more for your interests to feast on.
Actionable Steps
Identify in yourself what you academically trend towards without judgement.
Thinking about your strengths will help identify your weaknesses.
Check your ego at the door and look up some high school standards. What classes did you take back in the day, and what are the ones you didn't.
Think about using resources like Khan Academy and Crash Course (but there are also so much more!)
Create a skill tree to help identify your gaps and track your progress. Organization is key.
Check out the article I wrote a while back on the subject. And look forward to this Thursday's post where I'll be detailing my note taking process for Book I of "On the Social Contract" by Jean-Jacques Rousseau.
Lastly, always follow your passions and curiosities.
You're much more interesting than you think.