After being educated in England between the ages of 5 and 18 I found I had developed an unfortunate passivity that is the natural product of our education system.  I thought the teacher’s job was to teach me.  How absurd! Can you teach a chair?  Learning is something you can do – teaching is not.  A person can talk but they can’t teach.  They can use great illustrations but they can’t teach.  The fact that we, as a society, put so much emphasis on teaching and even call people “teachers” goes some way to explaining why our education system is as inefficient as it is.

What I should have come away with was these three thoughts instead:

  1. Be proactive – learning is my responsibility.  I should set out to acquire this knowledge from this process using my “teacher” as nothing more than a resource as I would a well written book.
  2. Be proactive – my level of motivation is my responsibility.  It is my mind, my motivation. I will work out a motivational strategy that works and constantly refine it.
  3. Be proactive – success is my responsibility.  I will break down my goal into small actionable items such as actions, habits, procedures and track my success at applying them.

Become a pro-active learner and you will receive the following benefits:

  • reduce your costs and improve your learning rate
  • receive the undying love & respect of your language coach (or “teacher”)
  • empower yourself
  • boost your confidence to learn anything in the future

Be proactive.