Fears About Learning

I remember the feeling of graduation and saying inside my head the school children’s rhyme “no more pencils, no more books, no more teacher’s dirty looks.” For 20 years, I have been in school; the summer breaks were the times that I looked forward to, a break from the monotony of going to class, listening to teachers, homework. But I love my library; I just felt there were other things to learn aside from what is imposed by my chosen course of study. There was more to life. I always felt that there was so much to learn, but so little time.

Now looking back, my school life seems a blur and average. I learned what I had to learn, to pass exams, to get good grades believing that I needed to learn all this to prepare me for my future chosen career.

But when I get to the real world, what I learned only helped me pass the test, I recognize that there was so much to learn. I had to learn the reality of doing things, how what I learned in books may not be practical in the field. I know I needed to continue learning, but I recognize a different kind of learning, a practical way of learning.

John Naisbitt said,” In a constantly changing world, there is no one subject or set of subjects that will serve you for the foreseeable future, let alone for the rest of your life. The most important skill to acquire now is learning how to learn.”

But have you ever felt that there was so much to learn and feel overwhelmed? Have you ever thought that you cannot learn new things anymore? As they say that you cannot teach an old cat new tricks. I had to look into myself and see why I was feeling this way. And I could only associate this hesitancy, this questioning, this doubt to fear. Current brain research says that emotions affect our learning. And the feeling of fear with learning is ever-present.

Ronald Gross, in his book Peak Learning, identified six fears about learning. He said that these fears arise directly from our experiences in school, where we’re supposed to learn to love learning. Negative feelings were produced because, in many cases, the old theories of education were based on mistaken beliefs about how learning works, making learning more difficult and less pleasant for most of us. He goes on to say that when we experience problems with learning anything, we feel blocked, bored, overwhelmed, or fearful, we are experiencing the effects of these past mistakes and our reactions to them.

To transform our negative feelings about learning into the joy and delight you can feel about self-learning, we need to consider these fears resulting from our school experience and how mistaken beliefs about how to learn contributed to our fears. Once we realize where they come from, we can overcome these fears. Once we know them, we can tackle them head-on.

6 Fears of Learning

Fear 1: I don’t understand what I’m learning.

This comes from the way we were taught in school. Our teachers determined how information was presented. And we were expected to learn them no matter if we are interested or not. And we may not have been allowed to process what we learn by applying it to our own life, making it a more meaningful experience for us.

But now as an adult learner, we can control the what, where, how, and the why of what we learn. Having this control takes out the feeling of helplessness that we felt as students in the old way of learning in school.

Fear 2: I’m not a person who can learn this subject.

We all have unique brains, so we have our learning styles. There are also some things we think we can’t learn, but this is only because they just did not come easily to us or did not get to practice them.

But now things are different; we can choose what to learn, the why, how-to, and where to learn. We can switch to different learning methods that fit us so we can learn what we need to know.

Fear 3. I don’t know how to learn this effectively.

In school, we were told “to go and learn this” with no clue as to how we were supposed to do it.

Fear 4. I won’t remember what I’m learning.

In school, we learn so we can answer exams. In the school system, we forget 90 percent of the information we learn to prepare for an exam within a week.

But now in real life, we choose what to learn, how much to learn, retain the knowledge based on what we find relevant to us to what we enjoy—no pressure to keep information. We decide if what we are trying to learn is good to know, what other knowledge is engaging, fun, and useful to hold on to, think about, and build on.

Fear 5. I feel ashamed that I don’t know anything.

For us to learn something, we need to admit that we do not know it. But in school, if we are called upon and do not know the answer, we are embarrassed.

Fear 6. There’s too much to learn.

This assumption is also from school. In school, learning is organized around a body of knowledge and courses leaving us feeling overwhelmed. But when we come to the real world, we now know there are no subjects, no courses. No fixed body of knowledge that is required.

Learning is an ongoing process where we learn what interests us to the depth we want. What is important is what we have done with the new knowledge that we learn.

I am learning things that I need at the spur of the moment, which is easy nowadays. All you need is to open up your smart device and search for what you need, and I can get all the information I need.

In A Nutshell

Feelings are important in our learning, and we can change our perceptions. And most of the emotions related to fear of learning stems from the way we learned in the old school system. We have to deal with all these fears of learning so we can start our journey of self-learning full of ease, enjoying the process of learning, taking in the knowledge we need, how we want to learn, when, and how long we want to learn it.

Once I overcame all these fears, I again found my excitement to learn new things. I once again found my love for books, for research, for learning in general. I am relaxed, less anxious about learning new things. I take my learning in stride, and I am less pressured because I know how to handle myself better.

Source

Gross, R. Peak (1999). Peak Learning. Pearson Custom Publishing. Hudson St, New York. p. 42-46