The Evolution of Human Learning

By Richard Hart – www.richardhart.ca

Our Unique Gifts

I believe our species has been endowed with at least 4 fundamental gifts that combine to make us unique.

1. We have been given the gift of not only adapting to a particular environment, but the ability to adapt to change itself.

2. As far as we know, we are the only species with the power to envision a future which has not yet come to pass and make such futures reality via our actions.

3. The ability to work together and share knowledge

4. Our ability to create and use technology

How did we get where we are today?

In order to understand how we got to where we are today, we need to look at where we started out.

By understanding how human learning has evolved, we can better understand our current state and possibly gain insight into how things may change in the future.

About 200,000 Years Ago....

● We clustered together in small groups/tribes for survival

● Knowledge learned via experience and observation and mimicry

● Primary storage medium for knowledge was the brain.

Before 3500 BC

● Most knowledge was passed down aurally via stories, rituals, songs and legends.

● Spoken language continued to develop

● Good memory skills were still vital as written language did not exist.

3500 BC – First Written Languages

● For first time ever knowledge and ideas can be written down!

● Low literacy rates

● Larger populations

● Agriculture advancing

● Get new ideas via travel

● Learn by watching and doing

● Good memory skills still vital

15th and 16th Century – Rise of Modern Science

● The modern scientific method develops

● the systematic pursuit of knowledge involving the recognition and formulation of a problem, the collection of data through observation and experiment, and the formulation and testing of hypotheses

● We now had a powerful new way of learning about whatever we focused on

1450 – Printing Press

● Apprenticeship is common.

● Literacy becomes a real advantage.

● Books, mail and newspapers exist to those who can read.

● While books have been around for a while, they were hard to come by for an average person.

● Most people had no formal schooling

● You could now mass produce information and distributive it to the masses.

Early 1900's● First state run public schools

begin to surface in North America.

● School is mandatory up to a certain age and modelled after a system from Prussia (Germany).

● Formal education becomes available to the masses.

● In many ways you can look at formal education as a technology.

● You have access to school, books, newspapers, pencils and slates and chalkboards.

Early 1900's continued...● The electric light is invented,

which greatly increases ability to study and read printed materials.

● You can share now ideas and communicate over long distances via the postal system.

● The telegraph and Radio's also exist and become new ways to send information great distances.

● Literacy rates begin to climb.

● The typewriter is invented opening up new possibilities for content production.

The Classroom/Lecture Model of the 1900's

● The state decided on the knowledge it wishes to convey to the students/citizens.

● The state hires and directs teachers on how the knowledge should be taught.

● Students are broken up into age groups and assigned to classes.

● Each class has a teacher assigned to it.

The Classroom/Lecture Model of the 1900's

● Students typically sit in desks and listen to their teacher lecture

● Students are evaluated by some criteria and if successful in meeting certain criteria advance to the next grade level.

● If students complete all the required grade levels, they graduate from school.

● Much of the population would complete at least elementary school and the a fortunate few would continue on to higher education.

The Only Thing you Can Count on is Change!

● This model has more less survived intact over the past 100 years but ...

● We live in a much different world than existed in the early 1900's.

● The rate of change we see in our world is accelerated by technology.

● We've moved from the industrial age to the information age.

● The technologies of language, writing, the postal system, books, and television had a huge impact on the amount of information available and the ability to extend and share information with others.

Technology Timeline● 1928 first TV broadcast

● 1951 First video recorder allowed for storage and playback of information.

● 1958 Educational Television , new opportunities for large numbers of kids/people to learn from home

● 1969 – ARPA --> The Internet is born

● 1980's --> Personal computers appear.

● 1993 --> First Web Browser (Mosaic)

● 1998 --> Google

● 2000 --> Rise of the smartphones

● 2001 --> Wikipedia

● 2004 --> Facebook

● 2007 --> iPhone

Age of Computers and Externalized Thinking

● Computers represented a quantum leap for humanity in that not only did they allow enormous amounts of information to be stored and retrieved at will, they also unloaded the need for information to be processed by a human brains.

● Computers could perform calculations, follow algorithms and process data in volumes and at speeds that simply just were not possible by a human beings. Thy allow us to examine and tackle increasingly complex problems.

Computers Continued..

● Computers have also extended our ability to simulate reality and to explore future possibilities and scenarios far into the future.

● With the introduction of the personal computer in the 1980's the nature of business, education and learning were changed forever.

● While the industrial age allowed humanity to augment our muscle, computers allowed us to augment our brain power in the age of information.

The Internet and Computers are a Game Changer

● Computers not only gave us the ability to offload information and retrieve it at will, they also gave a powerful tool for learning that can be used both in and outside the traditional context of school.

● In addition to offloading information, computers also allow us to offload a great deal of thinking as well.

● Computers allowed us to enhance our ability to play with reality and to envision new possibilities. Computer simulations can allow us to overcome our short term thinking as a species and envision the impact potential decisions may have on our future.

● The Internet gives an ever increasing portion of our species access to our entire collective knowledge base.

● It also greatly facilitates the sharing and distribution of information.

● The amount of information available to an average human and the ease in which this information can be added to and shared is unparalleled in our history.

Moving Into the Future

● Human knowledge is growing at and exponential rate, aided and accelerated by computing technologies and the Internet.

● How do we deal with information over abundance and constant accelerating change?

● The model for education established in the 1900's may be ill equiped to deal with this new reality. How can we improve it or do we need to reinvent it?

Some Tough Challenges Ahead for Humanity

● When presented with a crisis, our ability to learn and adapt as a species is unparallelled. There are many challenges that we can already foresee on the road ahead including:

● Climate change

● Energy Crisis

● Poverty and starvation

● Overpopulation

● And then there are the events and challenges we can not predict...

● We will need the entire collective will and knowledge of our species to solve these challenges. Everyone of us counts and everyone of us can decide to work together to build a brighter future.

Whats Old is New Again

So how do we cope with information explosion and accelerated change we are experience and move into a future we can not predict?

● Remember that evolution gave us the ability to adapt to change itself. We as a species have the unique ability to pretty much adapt to anything that gets thrown at us.

● Remember that we have the ability to imagine an infinite number of possible futures for our species, and the ability to work towards making them reality.

● Remember, that we are strongest as a species when we work together, learn together and share knowledge and ideas with each other.

Final Thought

“Education is not preparation for life; education is life itself.”

John Dewey

Want to learn more?

www.richardhart.caFollow me on Twitter at @richardhartca