EveryMan Learning

When you get to a certain age, there is a tendency to panic at the thought of anything more challenging than learning to play scrabble or sudoko it seems.  I go to healthy walking group regularly and the rest of our group is mixed but mostly over 60s – it being a weekday.  I have made it a point to engage lots of the walkers in general conversation regarding their past careers, and what made them do this and that.  They don’t seem to mind.  I am fascinated by how each person has reached any particular pinnacle of success and how they did so.  What is obvious is so many miss the discipline of going to work and the training courses they may have attended in latter years.   Many of my pals have taken up a real variety of training opportunities with U3A for example – and the world is very much their oyster.

There is such a lot of talk these days about the need for further education, going to university seems to be the be all and end all of the upper school education system.   Sometimes there are good reasons why not to take up a university place – maybe an apprenticeship opportunity comes along – that offers first class on the job training and a small paypacket.  After the 5 or 7 years, the candidate becomes a proud and fully trained motor mechanic, plumber or other vital trade.

As with all of life’s conundrums, careful thought has to be given to the benefits that might come from a specific career focused degree course.  For example, nursing – at one time a student nurse did training in the nursing school, then weeks on the ward and then back to the school for finals.  They were paid as working student nurses.   All these career based courses rely on continual top up training, usually online to keep development going.

My mother belongs to the biggest womens’ group you can imagine.  It’s well known throughout this country and probably the world and if it’s good enough for our monarch and her mother, then it’s certainly good enough for us.  There are so many different facets to this huge federation.  Mum has met an incredible range of folk and the speakers that come to entertain and hopefully educate the groups have been in the main, absolutely fascinating and interesting.   There have been one or two who could brush up on their delivery style, but generally the speakers are only paid a tiny amount for their expenses and are not really in the ‘after dinner speaker’ class.

The federation also facilitates learning – in a very big way.  They have every subject available and a ready made college for the purpose, although it’s a bit of a luxury to be residential – but probably suited to a queen!

Knowing how to learn is one of the skills in life that doesn’t necessarily come easily.  I recall when at school, I would respond best to the teacher out front who was amusing, spoke nicely and understood my dry sense of humour.  These things mattered for my self confidence.  Others in my cohort were perfectly happy just copying everything down from the board and not questionning anything teacher said or did.    Whether their learning came more easily is hard to say, but I needed more than dreary lessons.

I came alive when commercial subjects were available – I had to give up science to do typing and shorthand, but my parents figured these would stand any student in good stead throughout a lifetime of work, whereas sciences had a fairly limited appeal for normal life.  The ability to type brought great advances to me, it taught me how to appreciate all future training courses, online particularly.

One of the most useful things I learned in training courses over many years as a government worker was to get on with the task as soon as the email instruction arrived.  I was always in bother at school with homework for procrastination to the point that it was always done on the bus on the way to school – never a good idea.  This directly affected my chances of getting useable exam results and it took me a few years at real work to appreciate my methodology was rubbish.

So thereafter I have always taken training of any sort quite seriously.  Be it a first aid sampler, a customer service refresher, mandatory anti-fraud training.  I have read the instructions, read the purpose of the course and each element of each topic.  Once the point of the exercise is known, getting down to the learning is a doddle.  And often very rewarding.

A guiding hand when it comes to choosing careers, or just getting to grips with catching up on lost learning opportunities, that would be very helpful to just about everybody.  There are so many courses out there and it can be a bewildering exercise sifting through to find the exact combination of course material, helpful presentation and company expertise in helping  you use your newly gained skills to raise your game.

Knowing how best you sutdy also helps.  Some folk do like the sitting down with text book, note pad, endless sticky page markers etc. and they laboriously listen and note everything down.  This usually stores the relevant info in correct parts of their brain.  Whereas I much prefer the demonstration approach – the handbook for me is just another printed object – bring on the demonstrator to describe and show me how to do it, what happens if we don’t do it that way and how best to achieve my goals.

Knowing your whys from your wherefors can be one of those phrases that ancient relative toss at you when you’re desperately trying to extricate yourself from a pile of undone homework and are making rather a poor show of it!  There’s nothing more important in a child’s life than education – to parents and grandparents, this means the dull stuff that sometimes gets overlooked at school.  Some children absolutely love history and never have difficulty imagining themselves back in a particular period of time – Arthur and his Round Table is a good one for the lads.  The more romantic side of the Victorian era can often be the catalyst for lasses to get involved in the subject.

English language and literature were two of my absolute favourite subjects – the latter of course expanded on my growing appreciation of the former.  Using these skills in later life to understand everything in current affairs, necessary work instructions etc. can all form part of the whys and the wherefors.

When we think of Everyman we have to include absolutely everyone on this planet.  That of course is a generalisation but effectively true.  When we think of education and what is so abundantly available to every child from any background and any creed in this country, it seems almost obscene that some children cannot be bothered to go to school to take up this life enhancing opportunity.

However, sometimes when they reach early adulthood, youngsters to look back and regret those hourse spent idling with chums.  Really ruing the fact they messed up and cannot now get any kind of a job.    Getting educated is the one thing that has absolutely no detractors – it will assist us for the rest of our lives, whether in helping to get that job or keeping it when we’ve got it.  Learning isn’t all boring rote stuff.  There are the social skills too.

For the average family the expectancy is that each child will go to school, whether keenly or reluctantly doesn’t matter here, the fact they can go is the relevant issue.  Then we trust that the teachers will instill as much knowledge as possible into the brains of the children and that they will come out of school at the end of the conveyor belt as balanced, worthy and nice human beings!

some might do so well that they become teachers and lecturers themselves, or doctors, surgeons, bankers etc.  On the other hand, schools are able to see the potential in some children and get them streamed for great sporting careers or in the arts as singers, musicians etc.  Any child who faulters is picked up and helped along.  The same goes for those who missed out – online learning is a fantastic tool to help reinstate those years when effort didn’t come first.