It is not always easy for adults to learn something new and previously unfamiliar. Professionalism in adult training can make a decisive difference between success and failure.
In the early years of the digital age, we used to hear a lot of complaints about the new technology. People who had spent most of their professional lives working with card indexes, account books and filing cabinets, remembering the smallest note in the depths of their drawers, were suddenly expected to entrust everything to a box, a computer. To do this, they had to run programmes that seemed so much more cumbersome than filling out a form on a typewriter.
In the psychiatric clinic
Some people could not cope at all with the computers that were put in front of them. Some cursed the time and their bosses for making them do it, others suffered nervous breakdowns and were admitted to psychiatric hospitals. I knew one such case personally. The learning hurdle was certainly not the only reason why the man literally lost his nerve. But it was a determining one.
It was a time before the concept of lifelong learning was proclaimed and adult education became an integral part of the working life – although it still is not everywhere. It was a time when training was seen as a kind of time-out. Whether or not the skills acquired were of use in the day-to-day work was of secondary importance. With the onset of digital transformation, however, learning took on an unexpected urgency. This was new. For many people, the pressure was enormous. Some closed themselves off from learning altogether.
A little sailing is not so difficult after all
Refusing to learn is not a question of intelligence or basic receptiveness, as I recently discovered on board my sailing boat. I was sailing from the Cape Verde Islands towards West Africa. I usually travel alone. This time I had a guest on board, an anthropologist and writer who wanted to explore the islands of the Bijagos archipelago off the coast of Guinea-Bissau with me.
My companion had never sailed before. But I figured it couldn’t be too hard to learn a few basic sailing skills. After all, I wasn’t asking him to steer the boat. A few handholds, a few knots, and a bit of compass steering. That was all I was asking of him.
For some reason, however, none of the things I was explaining would sink into his head. I showed him what to do – in all my carefree routine. But even if I did it four times, he would get it wrong five times. As a result, we got into one or two tricky situations. And I must admit, I was annoyed.
Why could someone who does fieldwork as a scientist and interacts with foreign cultures not understand something as trivial as how to pull the right end of a rope? Or how to properly close the toilet pump? Or how to attach a fender correctly to the railing?
My guest is an intelligent person and we spent long evenings engaged in interesting conversations. He came across as open to new and unknown things. He has studied the legends of African peoples and translated them into Portuguese, his mother tongue. In short, he has a very good comprehension. But everything about the boat seemed to be beyond his grasp.
Only after my guest had disembarked – he had decided to stay with the locals on an island in the Bijagos instead of sailing on with me – did it dawn on me that maybe I had been the reason for his failure to learn on board.
Everything on board is unfamiliar
As a solo sailor, I certainly don’t have the patience for long explanations. Above all, I was too far detached from what I was trying to convey. The way I instructed my guest must have seemed very arrogant to him. What I took for granted was completely new to him. “Just do this, just do that.” Nothing was simple to him. He was dealing with an interplay of sails, lines, wind, and waves that may not be immediately clear to the layman. To make matters worse, the boat was on the move and sometimes behaved like a wild rocking horse.
I didn’t understand the strangeness of what my guest was experiencing. How could I have been a successful teacher under these circumstances? I undoubtedly lacked a certain professionalism. I had not planned the “training on board”, nor had I explained the aim of the training to my student. It is well known that adults learn best when they see the purpose behind it. The fact that he could make my life a little easier by assisting me was probably not motivating enough. After all, I didn’t bother to back up the “material” with any theory. Perhaps a drawing of the physics of sailing would have worked wonders.
The professionalism that I missed is now largely embedded in training practice, at least in Switzerland. This might be an essential prerequisite for dealing with the upcoming challenges. With AI, we are once again facing a technological revolution similar to the one in the last decades of the 20th century, when the first PCs appeared. Climate change will challenge us additionally and force us to learn. And just like on a ship, our survival may depend on how well we learn. But if teachers remain committed to their profession in the face of stormy seas and an uncertain future, we have a chance to master learning today.