Article Review: Teaching Smart People How to Learn By Joselito B Un

Article Review: Teaching Smart People How to Learn                                

It is categorically ironic to teach smart people how to learn when in fact they are already smart in the first place. This prompted me to reflect more on the true meaning of being smart. What would BEING SMART really entail that they still are to be taught? I supposed that redefining it is imperative and urgent in a dynamic business world where there are so many smart people, as most people would say.

I found this article by Chris Argyris to be revolutionary and timely even though the article is dated May-June 1991. It is revolutionary in the sense that this is a venture to challenging our usual paradigm about smart people, an out-of-the-box, fresh, introspective thinking. It is timely because in today’s varied and complex transaction-filled business undertakings, a whole lot of things need to be retooled and unlearned to be truly smart and stay competitive.

The article emphasizes the importance of probing into the reasoning about why people do certain things and how they reason about their own behavior. This does not have anything to do about motivation though but focuses on self-discovery and change.

Towards the later part of the article, it mentioned: “Everyone would have understood that act of questioning not as a sign of mistrust or an invasion of privacy but as a valuable opportunity for learning.” A premium can be placed to a person who has a healthy cultivation of asking the right questions. Throwing questions may not necessarily mean ignorance but can mean deep and reflective thinking. For example, asking questions why an event turned out to be unsuccessful should lead a person to examining what he did wrong or what he missed to do. This is a great opportunity to peek into a person’s ability to remain open and tolerant as opposed to closed and myopic. Alternatively, the most common and immediate, typical response by the so-called smart persons is to fix the blame outside of themselves – the problem could be somewhere, anything or anyone except themselves. In this way, there is no room for learning. Learning is put to a grinding halt.

Reading the article has helped me review the many activities in our school organization and how they are being handled by the top management team and unit heads. I am grateful to the author, Chris Argyris, for the many valuable insights he emphasized and shared. They necessarily made me reflect over those activities we have had in our school. I can truly attest to the fact that smart people are really problem solvers. With their eyes closed, they can maneuver to any sort of problem out there with much expertise and speed. As problem solvers, this may also turn out to be a weakness because they miss an opportunity to look at what they have unintentionally contributed to such problems. Due to their skills and expertise, they have perfected the art of troubleshooting problems that are really external (looking outward) without a better view of the internal (looking inward).     

Talk about defensive reasoning and this is present in our school too. With this article, I am able to note so many instances where defensive reasoning in department meetings, activity planning, evaluation meetings, among many others blocked creativity and progressive learning. These activities are living testament to the finger-pointing, blame-fixing scenarios that create a culture of mistrust and irresponsibility. On the flip side, these should become moments of great revelation about how organizers, people themselves, can check their own behavior, their response and their own contribution to the problem. Defensive reasoning should be changed to productive reasoning.  

Understandably, many people who are professionals experienced a lot of successes leaving no room for errors and failures. I would dare say that having successes and no failures can be disastrous to these people. Getting used to successes tends to blind people to the opportunities that lie behind those failures. Failures can be great teachers – intellectually, emotionally and spiritually. We can use failures to advance our learning. Failure is really not failure when we fail forward, as leadership guru John Maxwell had it in his book Failing Forward. Failure can strengthen our emotional maturity and can strengthen our ability to connect to a Higher Being who is the Great Director of Life.

A potential danger though is when a person becomes skilled and expert, the more he may likely become closed-minded. He may no longer need to listen enough or question himself enough since he has already reached the bar of excellence, the reason for his expertise. This can be the irony: “The more we know, the more we realized that there are so many things that we do not know.” Critical then is that a skilled and expert person should always be open to new learning – like a sponge that continues to absorb whatever is there to take.

Our organization would need to maintain and improve on how we create a culture of continuous learning. We made various attempts that promote a culture of a learning organization though. One that created the most impact among all faculty members across all disciplines is the Faculty In-Service Training (INSET) which is a comprehensive seminar-workshop training that serves to retool faculty members on teaching strategies, research, instructional design, national competency-based teacher standards, student performance measurement and assessment, outcomes-based education approach, among many others. This normally runs for about an entire semester where teachers are really like students who report and make assignments. This is well appreciated by the majority as this prompted many teachers to unlearn some of the wrong practices that were deeply ingrained in the teaching profession. Being a smart teacher is now redefined as it entails a lot of openness to new learning, willingness to take risks and accepting corrections and the drive to change in order to move forward and remain competitive – the new smart teachers!

As a final word on this article, for a learning organization to be truly victorious, change and transformation in productive reasoning should begin at the top. Leaders here should examine whether their espoused theory of action is aligned with their theory-in-use. Consistency is key in making smart people truly smart. They add value when they can accept & learn from failure, enthusiastic to examine their thoughts, feelings and actions and open to change.