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That approach applies to learning too, of course, and to all of education. In fact learning is never "done," not even the learning of a particular subject, and one's own education really doesn't end until the very end of life. Learning is unschooling--learning because we want to do it and need to. We might work towards certain goals (learning to print capital letters, or learning to add, or learning to read or speak another language, and perhaps to enter a good college, and to get a scholarship there, and to maintain good grades so as to retain the scholarship, to graduate, and to get a good job) but all of that is striving, not learning. It's neither the purpose of learning nor its worth or its joy. Learning is the process, and it is worthwhile for its own sake, and that is the source of our joy in learning something new or challenging, and it is why people get such pleasure from learning to do a hobby really well. We do the hobby for the love of it, and we learn it for the joy of doing it and the pleasure it gives in the doing. The author Robert Louis Stevenson said it another way in a beautifully printed motto we have in our home: "Little do you know your own Blessedness; for to travel hopefully is a better thing than to arrive, and the True Success is to labor." Joseph Katz (drkatz@msn.com) Distinguished Professor Emeritus and administrator of the Home Education Community on MSN Copyright © 1999 Joseph Katz. All Rights Reserved. Reprinted by permission For permission to reprint, please contact Dr.Katz |