How Can I Teach My Students to Learn on Their Own?’ By Frederick S. Oscanyan

One of the harder lines in contemporary education is a demand that students should learn on their own. Teachers, it is thought, often create more difficulties than genuine learning situations, and the teacher’s traditional roles ought to be replaced by en- couraging and abetting individual self-instruction.* This, however, raises a familiar problem: Students are not always able to learn by themselves. This in turn appears to produce a new and very important role for the teacher; teaching students how to learn on their own. But how can the teacher do this sort of thing? Clearly, such students need to become self-motivated; being able to learn on one’s own would seem to be the sort of thing which requires self-motivation if it can be done at all. Yet for some students at least, the ability to motivate themselves to learn on their own appears to be precisely what they lack and need to acquire, hence to be taught. But how does one reach self-motivation? Can it be done at all? The puzzle grows deeper and insofar as no response is ready to hand, it seems phi/osophica/. Solutions to these questions have already been ~ f f e r e d , ~ and we may provide our own upon reflection. But the difficulties encountered in finding an adequate answer suggests that some analysis of thesense of the question is required. It is to such a modest beginning that this essay is dedicated.

Supposing that certain students cannot learn on their own and must be taught how to do it has a rather practical ring. It is like saying, ”There is something which you cannot do now but which I am going to teach you to do, such that later on you will be able to do it.” Consider, for example, learning to drive a car. It makes sense to say that now you do not know how to drive a car but that someone can teach you, resulting in your being able to drive on your own. Driving involves certain perceptual skills, a special sense of caution, an appreciation of the rules of the road, and so on; that is, conceptual, perceptual and motor habits which we may not innately possess but which ordinarily can be readily acquired. Think about learning to use a sewing machine. Here again i t makes sense to say both fhaf and to say that you will be able to do i t later i f someone teaches you threading bobbins, feeding, turning, etc. Again, this is a matter of acquiring certain specific conceptual, perceptual and motor habits, and with the possible exceptions of the clumsy, the moronic, or the perverse, such habits generally can be developed by anyone. Thus, we have a discernible pattern: inability, followed by a learning situation, succeeded by a capability for doing that which previously could not be done.

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Frederick S. Oscanyan is an Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Yale University.

1. I am indebted to Professor Ronald Jager for some suggested improvements. He is not responsible for the finished product, however.

2. “The object of teaching is not so much to convey knowledge as it is to excite a determination in the child to acquire it for himself, and to teach him how to go about acquiring it.” Sir Alec Clegg, Revolution in the British Primary Schools (Washington, D.C.: National Association of Elementary School Principals, National Education Association, 1971); cited in Charles E. Silberman, The Open Classroom Reader (New York: Random House, 1973), p. 266. Also, see ibid., Part Three, ”The Role of the Teacher,” Chapter I. This view is by no means confined to “open classroom” advocates but is expressed by such diverse figures as R. Buckminster Fuller, Education Automation (Carbondale: Southern Illinois Press, 1962), and B. F. Skinner, The Technology of Teaching (New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts, 1968). For Skinner, the teacher as reinforcing mechanism (traditional role) is to be replaced by more efficient and dependable machines, thus freeing the teacher to “function, not in lieu of a cheap machine, but through intellectual, cultural and emotional contacts of that distinctive sort which testify to her status as a human being,” (p. 27), namely, of subtly inducing students to so act as to be appropriately reinforced-i.e., learn on their own. See pp. 140-144, and Chapter 7.

3. See ibid., also Jerome Bruner, Toward a Theory of Instruction (New York: Norton, 1968), Chapter 6: “The Will to Learn.“ The questions-and purported solutions-are by no means confined to the literature, but have arisen again and again in courses, graduate and undergrad- uate, on philosophy of education here at Yale, as well as in the teacher preparation program. These issues seem to have a life of their own.

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Apply this pattern to learning itself; we again say that conceptual and perceptual habits not now possessed will be acquired. And, being able to learn does imply something of the conceptual and perceptual means for dealing with what one is to learn. Here, however, there is something of a puzzle. Learning, we have said, involves the acquisition of certain conceptual and perceptual networks-which specific nets depends on what is being learned. But if that which is learned is learning itself, this implies that the habit and skills acquired are precisely the habits and skills of acquir- ing habits and skills. This is reflected in one aspect of the original question, namely, “How can I teach my students to learn?” This is mysterious in that teaching one’s students implies that they are learning, so that “teaching them to learn” leads to “learning to learn,” as reflected in “acquiring the habits and skills of acquiring habits and skills.” “Teaching one’s students to learn on their own,” as involving “teaching them to learn,” thus leads to a paradox; it seems that students cannot learn at all (much less on their own) unless they have been taught to do so, while teaching them to learn requires that they be able to learn from that teaching. If students cannot learn they cannot learn to learn, while if they can learn that is because they have already learned to learn. “Teaching one’s students to learn on their own” in terms of “teaching one’s students to learn,” thus seems to be either impossible or else a senseless teaching of something already a ~ q u i r e d . ~

One way of trying to respond to the paradox, while sidestepping these uncom- fortable consequences, would be to deny that the paradox applies to being taught to learn on one’s own. This is to maintain that the qualifier “on their own” indicates that the students are to master a far more specific activity than learning in general, so that “teaching one’s students to learn on their own” does not first require that one address oneself to the paradoxical problems of “teaching one’s students to learn” in general. Such students, it would thus be said, can only proceed to learn on their own after they have acquired certain particular habits and skills which they do not initially possess. “Teaching one’s students to learn on their own” makes sense then precisely insofar as they do not possess those habits and skills characteristic of that specific activity, and to address oneself to the problem of how to do this does not lead to the paradox precisely because those particular habits and skills are not the ones involved with learning in general. But such a solution to the paradox would not appear to be very satisf act0 ry.

The process of ”learning on one’s own” surely more closely resembles learning i n general than any more specific activity such as driving, running a sewing machine, flying a kite, and so on. There are presumably a number of activities which can be self-taught once one has ‘’learned’’ how to learn on one’s own, i n much the same sense that there are a number of activities which one can learn once one has passed over the (perhaps non-existent) hurdle of “learning to learn.” More generally, learning on one‘s own consists in any case of a cluster of learning activities, so that the habits and skills involved with learning on one’s own would thereby seem necessarily t o resemble those involved with learning i n general. Maintaining that they are really different in the face of such resemblance thus would appear to be the result of a disguised attempt to avoid the paradox of learning to learn.

The paradox arises through a question, “How can I teach my students to learn?” a question having as a more general form or schema “How can I teach my students X?” Certainly such a question can make good sense, e.g., for “X” read “to drive,” or “to

4. From the point of view of the learner, this is a variation of the Meno paradox: “A man cannot try to discover either what he knows or what he does not know.. . . He would not seek what he knows, for since he knows it there is no need of the inquiry, nor what he does not know, for in that case he does not even know what he is to look for.” (80E) Also, cf. Euthydernus 276A-277C. In the Meno, Socrates characterizes the paradox as a “trick” which is not really a good argument, and resolves it by telling a myth. (81A-E) In Euthydemus, Socrates tells Clinias that to resolve such a paradox one must “learn first of all. . .the right use of words.” (277E) While in the Meno, Socrates’ resolution involves showing that “there is no such thing as teaching” (82A), in Euthydernus Socrates teaches Clinias the right use of words. Since we are concerned with teaching, our discussion should be viewed in terms of the eristics of the Euthydernus, rather than the aporetics of the Meno.

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rollerskate,” or “algebra,” or “American history,” or “to run a sewing machine.” When for X we read a particular subject-matter or a specialized activity, the question is intelligible not only because an answer to the question is dictated-in part, at least- by that particular subject-matter or activity, but especially insofar as that subject X is not itself a matter of teaching or learning. The question is at least understandable, even if we cannot answer it, insofar as we have or can have some understanding of the particular X which is independent of the specifics of the learning of X.

There is, however, no such ground separate from the schema of a question when that question asks i n effect about itself. “How can I teach my students to learn on their own?” read in terms of “How can I teach my students to learn?” leads, as we have seen, from teaching to learn to learning to learn, so that to ask the question about “learning on their own” asks about learning in general as well, and so about the learning involved in “learning to learn” rather than about any distinct subject-matter. And it is just this which is puzzling about the question, namely, that while the schema “How can I teach my students . . . ? ” seems well-formed and so to be leading to an answerable question, the subject-matter turns out t o be an essential aspect of that schema, and this involution produces a sense of confusion. What starts out making sense suddenly turns upon the sense which it has made and throws that into question. To be able to give an answer requires us first to make sense out of the question, and that is precisely how we are led into the paradox. But i f this is the origin of the paradox, is the question just a matter of confusion? Can it be taken as expressing a genuine concern?

Being able to learn on one’s own requires a certain independence of thought. It implies that a student who can do so is able to develop inquiry and interest without being guided, helped, led or motivated by another person, a teacher. This hints at a notion of genuine self-determination; that the student who is self-taught not only can learn without assistance, but decides for him or herself what he/she should learn.5 Now, it is just this conception of student self-regulation which is bound up with the question, “How can I teach my students to learn on their own?” and it is through a concern with this rough sense of an exercise of personal freedom that the question gains significance in spite of the confusion which it engenders.6 Nevertheless, i n a very important sense the question remains a confusion.

Taking the schema, “How can I teach my students. . . ?” we read a matter of real interest into the question, namely of helping our students develop a sense of personal freedom in terms of deciding what they are tc-ought to-learn. As we have already seen, the schema “How can I teach my students X?” has a certain immediate signifi- cance associated with the many X’s to which it can fruitfully be applied. Thus, when we read the question-scheme with this particular interest in mind, the result is a question (“How can I teach my students to learn on their own?”) which appears to be well-formed but really isn’t. “How can I teach my students some specific subject?” and the issues of self-determination embodied in “learning on one’s own” are both genuine problems, but we are deceived by the typical sense of the schema of the question which unites the two into thinking that “How can I teach my students to learn on their own?” is a particularly deep and cogent way of connecting them up, and so of addressing ourselves to developing self-regulation on the part of our students. We are then led by our consequent inability to give a satisfying answer to that question (which really stems from its paradoxical nature) to view it as having profound philosophical merit-even though we cannot possibly answer it. As a result, the issues surrounding how students are to address themselves to what they should learn are clouded by the character of the paradox simply as a paradox, and particularly by the inherent misti- ness of answers to paradoxical questions.

I would like to suggest that while the elements of the question, both how to teach something and learning on one’s own, are each of genuine significance when taken

5. Deciding what to learn would seem to require some foreknowledge of those subjects

6. Cf. “Freedom, Autonomy and Teaching,” Kenneth Strike, Educational Theory, Vol. 22 under consideration, which leads to another version of the Meno Paradox. (See note 4, above)

(1972), pp. 262-277.

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separately, a question which puts them together in this way is a nonsense question. And once one sees this, and is no longer mesmerized by the question, it becomes clear that the character of the paradox, so long as we are fascinated by it, keeps us from addressing very important questions about teaching and learning. Questions such as to what extent we actually do and do not want our students to decide what they are to learn, and especially in what sense-if any-we believe they are capable of making such decisions. So long as we are preoccupied with the problem of how to teach our students to learn on their own, we will not notice how easy it is to presume simple answers to these questions, e.g., by making the mistake of supposing that students who are able to learn on their own will always pursue subjects which we take to be important.’

7. “The Implications of the Permissiveness Doctrine in American Education,” Fred N. Kerlinger, Educational Theory, Vol. 10 (1960), pp. 120-127, provides a clear-headed anticipation of this mistake. Jonathan Kozol, Free Schools (Boston: Houghton-Mifflin, 1972), succeeds in recognizing the error in two chapters on “hard skills”; Anthony G. Oettinger, Run, Computer, Run (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1969), Chapter 3, “Educational Technology: The Processes,” tries to address it.

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