TEACHING OR LEARNING?

I read the other day an interview with Helen Erickson, a daughter-in-law of Milton. The interviewer asked how Milton had influenced her. What she said set off inside myself several reflections.

“He [Milton] was so Socratic in his methods that I don’t think I’ll ever know for sure how he influenced me. He masterfully seeded ideas and let me discover them in my own time, so that I owned the knowledge.”

Now isn’t that a tremendous description of a self-actualizing trainer! Ideally, what a trainer does is to get people to become learners or discoverers on their own. That is what truly empowers a person, it enables them to discover things and to own their discoveries. And this is what people who come to our trainings genuinely want, is it not? Then she said this:

“I abandoned the concept of teaching years ago; I focus on learning. I know that teaching without learning has little lasting effect; focused on the educator teaching is often perceived by the leaner as trivial information. On the other hand, learning is contextual and ongoing. ... Seeding, direct and indirect suggestions, and reframing are extremely important techniques to help people learn.”