This chapter really resonated with me and my various experiences with learning in the current educational systems, particularly because I’ve been reflecting the past 10 years on learning and motivation and how I’ve been really unmotivated to learn in current formal educational settings, although I am a person who loves to engage in a learning process. I think all three theoretical learning perspectives have a place in analyzing how a person learns, like constructivists, I believe and know all our personal experiences are valid and they certainly enhance a collective learning experience. Much like cognitivists and behaviourists I also think there are key habits and strategies that are helpful to develop to engage effectively in the learning process. Ideally all three perspectives would be valued and developed for each individual. I think all the perspectives are necessary because, like in the video of Destin Sandlin at Smarter Every Day about the backwards bicycle, he concluded 3 things; welders are often smarter than engineers, knowledge does not equal understanding and truth is truth. The conclusion about the welder was more of a subjective joke due to the situation that the welder made the bike work backwards and didn’t think Destin (the engineer) would be able to ride it, although initially prior to being humbled Destin thought he could. The video goes on to show how challenging it is to learn something new after it has become a habitual piece of knowledge. The conclusions I resonate with and can affirm in my own personal experience are about how knowledge does not equal understanding and that truth is truth. In my experience, knowledge does not equal understanding because you can know something, such as a fact about the universe or the answer to a mathematical equation, but that knowledge could only be known, because someone told you or you googled it. However, if you know the answer and someone asks you the brilliant questions: “Why?” i.e “Why is that a fact about the universe?” or “Why is that the answer to that math question?”. Unless you possess understanding related to the knowledge you would not be able to answer the question beyond restating the knowledge. I think this is evident in our society, for example, the majority of people, if not everybody knows racism is bad and wrong. However, there is not much understanding of their knowledge, because I think if there would be an understanding developed collectively, it would be unlikely that racism would still be around. The understanding of why it is wrong is absent. Knowledge does not equal understanding, and knowledge without understanding seems idle.  The other conclusion of truth being truth resonated with me because I really struggled in my experience in the education system because of the contradictions among various disciplines, for example if you consider the perspective on human nature that a sociologist, psychologist, biologist, anthropologist, etc has it will different, and in some cases contradictory.  Truth can have different perspectives but if it’s the truth it shouldn’t contradict or be subjective.

One of my best and empowering learning experiences was what led me to determine my area of study for my undergraduate degree. Previously, I really struggled in trying to figure out what I wanted to study, I used to want to be a teacher but I didn’t like taking all these different courses that didn’t seem to see reality as one. I went into business but that also did not motivate me. I tried some philosophy courses and that was the first time I felt motivated in a post secondary setting, it was a critical thinking class and it really made me feel empowered and happy to learn. I enjoyed it because it actually was more about understanding, rather than solely knowledge and just memorizing information for a test, and following a set of instructions.