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WINNIPEG FREE PRESS
The Value of Learning to Learn

Thu, Jul 12, 2001

Linda Rosborough

WORKING at a newspaper is an ideal job for the terminally curious. In this job, there are always people to talk to, people you might ordinarily have never met, who do things you most probably would never have known about. It's a licence to ask questions.

Beyond the twice-monthly paycheque, that's a pretty good reason to show up for work in the newsroom every day.

Learning is good for us, and not just in the obvious ways related to schoolwork and job prospects. It is said to improve health and prolong active citizenship. It also makes life more interesting.

While learning is embedded in the culture in an institutional way, we could all do with more freedom and encouragement to learn, long after graduation from school.

Research done by the Campaign for Learning in the United Kingdom indicates that 77 per cent of employees would prefer to work for an employer that supports learning and training, rather than one that gives large salary increases. Another report, however, found that one-third of workers had never been offered any kind of training.)

This is important, and human resource managers should take note, but it's a different matter than lifelong recreational learning or learning for self-improvement.

Sometimes, we became too attached to the idea of learning for an expressed purpose, that it ought to be practical and relevant. Maybe it starts in grade school, when students ask: Will we need to know this for a test? If the answer is no, interest wanes.

But learning, for its own sake, has value. Increasingly, I meet people who are taking lessons in yoga, cooking or creative writing, rather than the kind of task-oriented classes that require textbooks and result in a diploma or a promotion.

For the past month, I've been taking a meditation class. We meet Thursdays in Osborne Village, in a candle-lit, incense-infused room. I like the classes, even if I suspect I'm not a very good student. Mostly, I'm learning to fall asleep on cue.

The teacher, bless him, is patient. Each time I tell him that I see only blackness and emptiness during a meditation, he smiles, nods and tells me everything is good and not to be frustrated.

At the very least, I'm accepting that I can't learn everything right away and that wisdom takes time. (Especially wisdom that is to be gleaned from dreams and visions.)

Retirees who take up a different career, go back to school or pursue a new interest are admirable. My dad is one of them. The training he took, and the learning he continues to do, for his volunteer job with a crisis centre in Toronto is not only satisfying and challenging work for him, it's an example to me.

But we need not wait for retirement to embrace learning for its own sake. Four years ago, Joanne Klassen turned 50 and decided to take a turn in her career. As a personal and business development specialist, she had written myriad articles and workbooks throughout her consulting and training career. Her personal writing, however, had been on the back burner.

I'd written a thousand training manuals, she says. People said to me, 'Boy, you're really a writer!' but it had nothing much to do with me.

She founded Winnipeg's Heartspace Writing School (www.write-away.net) to help writers of all ages and backgrounds to develop their natural strengths and to become comfortable with putting words on paper.

The goal of the transformative writing™ approach -- a step-by-step process over 32 weeks -- is not to produce published, professional writers, but to use writing as a tool for personal enrichment and professional development.

There is no red correction pen, and participants are urged to banish the ghosts of self-criticism and procrastination. The primary tools of writing in these classes are not dictionary and grammar book, but memory and imagination.

Write for you is also right for you, says Klassen, a positive-thinking woman who points out that this year begins the Decade of Lifelong Learning in Canada.

Her classes are less about the craft and technique of writing, and more about building a bridge through personal writing to ourselves and the world beyond.

As a side benefit, one Klassen had not originally envisioned, friendships form among students as a result of sharing their writing. Klassen, too, writes stories and poems in the classes, drawing upon her memories.

While improved communication skills are likely to enhance job skills and workplace opportunities, there is an important distinction between skills we acquire to earn a living, and skills we learn to live our lives. Each of us has stories to tell and share.

I believe there's a writer in each of us, Klassen says. Just because we're born to express ourselves.

Ú linda.rosborough@freepress.mb.ca

© 2001 Winnipeg Free Press. All Rights Reserved.