Learning: The Work of a Lifetime
As long as we are living, we are learning.
Learning how to learn is the work of a lifetime.
Never stop learning.
Conventional wisdom encourages us to keep learning, but we are also conditioned to end our education (if we are privileged to pursue post-secondary schooling) in our early 20s. Even as “going back to school” for a Masters degree has become more common, the average age of graduate students in the United States has hovered around 33 since the 1990s. The take-away message: Never stop learning, but do it yourself. And only do it when you can invest lots of time and money (or take on debt) to access education that advances your career.
“Lifelong learning” is defined as the ongoing, voluntary, and self-motivated pursuit of knowledge. (If these features distinguish it from degree-oriented education, what does that say about other forms of education?) It is often described as being “self-initiated” and designed to support personal development. In other words, lifelong learning tends to be an individualistic exercise in enrichment -- not a collective pursuit in service of the common good. There is nothing wrong with being autodidactic -- a pretentious way to describe one who is self-taught. It is good to make time to read on unfamiliar subjects, revisit works that moved us earlier in life, or pick up a new skill through trial and error. But what if lifelong learning wasn’t lonesome? How might we grow if we weren’t left to our own devices?
Generally speaking, we organize our lives into distinct phases: (1) stages when we acquire knowledge -- as students, at school; and (2) stages when we apply the knowledge acquired -- as earners, in our careers. To be sure, students often perform wage-work while pursuing their degrees, but such work is typically disconnected from their studies. Indeed, many students are motivated to pursue a degree in order to rise out of or pivot away from a job they feel stuck in. Moreover, we tend to cram all of our formal education, somewhat uncomfortably, into the first three decades of our lives, which can lead to feelings of overwhelm, burnout, and a desire to be done with school. We do this even though few of us know what we want to do with our lives when we are ostensibly college-aged. Thereafter, it is time to “get to work” -- in part, so we can pay off student loans accrued during an intensive phase of education.
After a decade of teaching and mentoring college students, I’ve confirmed that very few students in their late teens or early twenties have keen awareness of all the things they could possibly do and be. (And neither did I.) Even if we have an inkling of the impact we wish to have, the path ahead is unlikely to be linear or easy to trace. As we collectively face intersecting ecosocial crises -- and recognize the need to exist as part of nature and in ways that promote equity and mutual thriving -- we cannot be certain of what we’ll need to know in the future. Why, then, do we expect young people to invest so much time in their education without first the chance to explore their identities and figure out what broken parts of the world they most want to repair? And why do we expect older people to grapple with a changing world in isolation?
EcoGather exists to enable and enliven a dynamic balance between learning, work, and active engagement in communities of praxis at all stages of adult life. We believe that learning is the work of a lifetime. So we make it possible for teachers and learners to constantly swap roles, for communities to both share their knowledge and glean new insights from others. Each EcoGather learner brings their lived experience and expertise to the EcoGather network; from that well of co-created wisdom, each can draw on sustainable practices from around the world in service of the common good.
