Marcia interviews Mary Catherine Bateson, who says, "There is a general problem that when you talk about learning, people tend to think about education. That is to say, the conversations drift to talking about the institutions that educate people."

"But formal learning is only a tiny fraction of the learning that human beings do in the course of a lifetime. Learning is the distinctive way that human beings survive."

"Human beings are not only born with the capacity for learning, they are born with the capacity to find learning rewarding. We lose some of that sense because learning isn't always fun in school. But mastering a new school or encountering something stimulating that's different is rewarding and, furthermore, it keeps you awake. In other words, a learning environment—an environment that is supportive of learning—is also an alert environment."

"You can't convert experience into learning without reflection. It may not be explicit, but you have to digest it somehow."

posted by jay cross at 5/19/2001