Don’t let schooling make you miss out on education

Has school liberated your mind – or trained it to obey?

One of the greatest dangers of education is confusing knowing what you were taught with knowing how to think.

For centuries, people treated the brain as a black box. We could observe what went in and what came out as behaviour, but we couldn’t see what was happening inside. Where visibility is limited, assumptions fill the gap.

Many of those assumptions have since been challenged.

We once believed the adult brain was largely fixed. Neuroplasticity has shown us that the brain can change through learning, experience, practice and environment.

We also say, “People resist change.”

But what if some of what we call resistance is actually the brain responding to uncertainty, threat, loss of control or lack of clarity?

Instead of asking: “Why are people resisting?”

Ask: “What is this change asking their brains to deal with?”

That is the difference between labelling behaviour and interrogating it.

As Eric Hoffer warned: “In times of change, the learners will inherit the earth, while the learned will find themselves beautifully equipped to deal with a world that no longer exists.”

You may need to memorise information to pass an examination. But passing the examination should not be the end of your education.

It should be the beginning of your interrogation.

Is this still true?

What evidence supports it?

What evidence challenges it?

In my NeuroTalks and NeuroWorkshops, I challenge leaders and teams to do exactly that: question the assumptions that shape how we think, lead, behave and perform.

Schooling can give you answers.

Education should teach you how to question them.

Learn. Unlearn. Relearn.

Be careful not to mindlessly fall in love with yesterday’s facts that hold no value today.