Contents |
[edit] Origin and History of Learning
(UNFINISHED NOTES)
Three kinds of references to the origin and history of learning exist: (1) etymologies: descriptions of origins of words derived from other languages; (2) histories of societies or civilizations in which writers and speakers presume that learning has occurred; and (3) practices intended to result in learning, such as through instruction.
A sample etymology of the word learning identifies multiple derivations from words in several languages over at least eight centuries. The meaning from these derivations range from “to follow or find the track” to “to teach” and “to make known.” These meanings leave an unclear picture of what constitutes learning other than that is what someone(s) has named an imprecise set of observations and conclusions about an imprecise phenomenon.
[edit] A Fourth Option
A fourth reference remains unwritten: a description of the origin and history of learning that results from scouring ancient to more contemporary documents and artifacts for evidence of learning and its place in the world.
The resulting void leaves unanswered questions with implications for practices to increase learning today. Filling the void would help to clarify whether learning occurs as a process relative to fluctuations in social mores or as an independent absolute process indemic to human life and existence. For example, would either a person or humanity exist without learning?
Of primary importance are answers to the question, “What over millenia has been referred to as learning by contemporaries in those times, how have those references occurred, and to what result?” Answers to this question allows identifying residuals of these references that influence practices today as people try to accelerate and increase learning.
What part has learning played through history in the origin and development of societies and of changes in the human condition? What is the earliest evidence of learning playing that part? What is the earliest reference to learning as an independent entity in any society? Does the reference indicate that learning exists as a personal property, a social judgment, or as something else? When and how did learning expand into the social institution of education as distinct from other relationships, such as economics, politics, religion, or something that does not exist today?
These questions lead to others that set the context for learning in and out of schools today. When and where did the behavior patterns we now name learning first appear? What resulted from this appearance? How did these patterns reoccur? What subsequent changes have occurred in behavior patterns that people today refer to as learning?
Today, depictions of learning as an independent personal property (a mental condition, cognitive process) or entity distinct from politics, economics, and social mores appear by inference not by reference to ancient artifacts or oral history. From that view, it seems plausable that the first inference of learning in accounts of human history occur prior to the discovery of fire and shelter.
The “first exactly dated year in history is -4241” through carbon-tests of earliest cities in Mesopotamia. The existence of ancient cities indicates that people learned how to make them. What evidence v. inference exists of that learning?
Return to Main Page Summary of Classic Education
[edit] Related Sources
Grun, B. (1982). The Timetables of History: A Horizontal Linkage of People and Events. NY: Simon & Shuster, pp. 2-3.
[edit] Related Reading
Boorstin, D. (1985). Learning to Look. The Discoverers: A History of Man’s Search to Know His World and Himself. NY: Vintage Books, pp. 421-429.