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Welcome to these regular musings, meanderings, wonderings and wanderings by Wendy Priesnitz.    Slow Learning – March 6, 2005 There is one definition of intelligence that involves speed, results and competition – getting the right answer to a question quickly and doing it faster than anyone else. Many parents seem to buy into this definition by comparing the speed at which their children master skills, and being proud when they have learned to walk, talk or read before the neighbor’s kids have. Many teachers show that they value this type of intelligence by praising students who can come up with the “right” answer to an oral quiz, who solve problems quickly, or who choose the most prescribed answers on a multiple choice test within the allotted time frame. Unfortunately, some people who perform well in this sort of school setting don’t do as well in the real world. And conversely, many successful and unquestionably “intelligent” people like Albert Einstein do poorly in school. That’s why I prefer a definition of intelligence that involves the ability to explore the world and to understand one’s experiences in it. You could call it “slow learning” because it’s not oriented towards quick results or competition with others. Rather, it involves knowing how to create hypotheses and to test them. It also understands that answers are only “right” in certain contexts and favors the personal process over the more public – and testable – product. As Harvard professor Ellen J. Langer writes in her book The Power of Mindful Learning (Perseus Books, 1998), “If we can shed [the] outcome orientation, we may discover that the freedom to define the process is more significant than achieving an outcome that has no inherent meaning or value outside that particular setting.” When education becomes a journey rather than a destination, learning can be seen as a process of active self-determination. And that is a life’s work. Posted: 2005/03/06 12:22 PM   Return to current blog Comments? Suggestions? Email Us copyright © Wendy Priesnitz 2004-2009

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