Chapter 15: Learning: Strategies for Continuous Improvement

Learning is finding out what we already know. Doing is demonstrating that you know it. Teaching is reminding others that they know just as well as you. You are all learners, doers and teachers.

—Richard Bach,
writer

What Is Learning?

To learn means to acquire knowledge, skill, or information. You can learn by study, by example, and most of all, by experience. In some respects, we can't stop ourselves from learning. We learn simply by living. All of our senses provide us with information. We are not all intellectually equal, but we are all able to take in new information, to form ideas, to change our lives. Learning is an equal opportunity employer.

Learning enriches our environment. When a person who can't read learns to do so, for example, he doesn't just learn to put letters together to make words. He opens up whole new worlds. He increases tremendously not only his opportunities to succeed in the world, but also his ability to make a contribution to it. It's the snowball effect at work. You never know where the one thing you learn today will lead you tomorrow. As the famous orator Frederick Douglass said, "A little learning, indeed, may be a dangerous thing, but the want of learning is a calamity to any people."

Learning is not attained by chance. It must be sought for with ardor and attended to with diligence.

—Abigail Adams,
U.S. first lady