Teaching People How To Learn And How To Teach Themselves

As I was reading this USA Today article about robots stealing human jobs, my attention focused on the following statements by James Bessen, an economist, Boston University law lecturer, and author.

Mr. Bessen explains the problem:

"The problem is people are losing jobs and we're not doing a good job of getting them the skills and knowledge they need to work for the new jobs Addressing this skills gap will require a paradigm shift both in the way we approach job training and in the way we approach education. Technology is very disruptive. It is destroying jobs. And while it is creating others, because we don’t have an easy way to transition people from one occupation to another, we’re going to face increased social disruption. 

In this new age, we can't treat learning as finite. We need to move to a world where there is lifelong learning. You have to get rid of this idea that we go to school once when we’re young and that covers us for our career ...... schools need to teach people how to learn, how to teach themselves if necessary."

Mr. Bessen provides us with the key to learning in the above second paragraph. The key is "lifelong learning ..... schools teaching people how to learn ...... how to teach themselves if necessary" (see Abraham Lincoln's upbringing and love for reading books here, thus being self-taught).

The concept of teaching people how to learn and how to teach themselves, goes back thousands of years to the Old Testament. Note the admonitions from God to Israel in Deuteronomy 6-8 and see if this is not true. Also note the apostle Paul's admonition in Romans 2:17-20 and his ensuing questions in Romans 2:21-23. Then note the application between learning and teaching in 2 Timothy 2:1-2; cf. Deuteronomy 4:9-10; Psalm 78:1-8; Ezra 7:10). Note the sequence: We must (1) hear; (2) learn; and then (3) teach others.

Beloved, the bottom line is this: We have to teach ourselves the scriptures before we can adequately teach others. This requires "digging for the gold" ..... digging for the nuggets of truth contained in God's word (see paragraph under The Preacher and Study heading in this article).

—Mike Riley, Gospel Snippets