Purpose Learning

Direct Learning

From [1] - Directness is the idea that you best learn a skill when you practice it in the environment you plan to use it in. For example, if you want to be a great public speaker, rather than buying a book on public speaking, find opportunities to practice public speaking.

We avoid being direct in our learning because we either don’t want to step outside of our comfort zones, we’re uninspired, or it’s time-consuming. For example, we download an app or buy a book because, although this method doesn’t produce long-lasting results, reading about a skill provides a sense of satisfaction without the need to practice it. But if you want to truly master a skill or topic, always immerse yourself in opportunities for direct practice.

Directed Learning or Direct Instruction and

Objective, purpose, task-oriented learning is a critical component of Pedagogy. However, Direct Instruction (DI) in pedagogy is a technical term that refers to highly scripted, sequenced learning, but not explicitly connected to Purpose Learning or Direct Learning.

Direct Learning is supposed to be the learning of things directly related to accomplishing things, physical, mental, or spiritual. It is not learning theory first - it is practice first - from which more profound theory can be learned. Theorists accomplish amazing things - such as Einstein in E=mc2 - but the downside is the atomic bomb. Practitioners, on the other hand, obtain a more integrated perspective because they are not armchair theorists, and thus have a more entrepreneurial perspective. They are Eu-entrepreneurial. However, practitioners, such as Buckminster Fuller, are nothing without sufficient Moral Intelligence to collaborate. I say this because even Fuller believed in patents.

Applied Learning and Direct Learning and Experiential Learning

What is the difference between direct learning and applied learning? Disintegrated learning alert - the mainstream mental model appears to be that direct learning and applied learning (experiential learning) are distinct [2]. These are integrated at OSE according to the Good to Great principle of the Genius of the And. For best results, why cannot we have direct applied learning? Just add one into the other, don't emphasize one over the other.

Is applied learning the same as experiential learning?

Critiques of factory education center on: purpose greater than oneself, moral intelligence, engagement and aliveness, freedom, and constant change.

Purpose Learning

What we need is Purpose Learning - [3] - Think-feel-do - as an antidote to the Factory Model of education.

But also note that purpose does not always have to be benign, in its unambiguous form. Good to Great points this out - in that some 'great, enduring' companies have dubious purpose, such as Philip Morris.

Active vs Passive Learning

Experiential is not understood in Vietnam - they call it active [4]. Active learning reduces failure of a class from about 30% to about 20% [5]. That must be a hard class.

Prep Schools Fight the Class War

Note interesting point - Schools often spend too much energy on what they produce rather than why they exist, which creates a culture that values taking over giving and consuming over making. John Allman, head of school at Trinity School (NY)—who wrote a letter to parents in the summer of 2017 that was referenced in The New York Times article “Can Prep Schools Fight the Class War?”—criticized “consumerist families that treat teachers and the school in entirely instrumental ways, seeking to use us exclusively to advance their child’s narrow self-interests.” He concluded by saying “to deconstruct this default understanding of Trinity as a credentialing factory, we need to actively develop in our students compelling understandings of the socially redeeming purposes their knowledge and skills could and should serve.” [6]

College Graduation

• Top schools lose about 2% their freshman year, but overall college graduation rate is only about 60%! [7]

OSE Integration

OSE recognizes 2 elements of effective learning - directness and practice - but above this all - purpose. Directness implies intent of applying the knowledge - a purpose of direct application. A higher purpose. Starting with addressing class war. Because class war (illusion of separateness and lack of inclusion + collaboration) appears to be a key driver of authoritarianism. Has not all imperialism, colonialism, and authoritarianism including marxism and communism been based on class war.