Just In Case Vs. Just In Time Learning

Last night I went to a great talk by Pat Bassett who is the past president of the National Association of Independent Schools.  He is a recognized and learned expert on education and an enthusiastic and entertaining speaker.  His talk started with the idea that Americans are in our third revolution, the first being the actual American Revolution, the second the civil rights movement and the third being the Internet.

He went on to talk about how the Internet changes everything about school, something I whole-heartedly agree with.  How many times I have said, “Why should kids memorize things that they can look up in the blink of an eye with the device they hold in their hands at all times?”

Now don’t get me wrong, learning history so you can understand things in context not only about the past, but in real time is very important, but memorizing lists of things seems to be unneeded today.  One idea Pat talked about was “Just in case learning versus just in time learning.”  When you were in school did you ever say out loud, “When am I going to use this?”  That is just in case learning.  The problem is you can’t always predict what you may need to know when you are older or how learning one thing becomes a foundation for learning something else and the something else is really what you end up loving.

“Just in time learning” is how I learn now.  When I have something I want to accomplish and I need to master a skill I don’t have then I learn it.  I was never one to want to learn just for knowing, but always for using.  One example was when I became a consultant.  I did not really know how to use Excel or create complicated spread sheets, but suddenly I had a job that required me to do that, so I learned.  I taught myself as I went along.  The need drove the learning.

I know plenty of “life long learners,” some are people who would be happiest to be perpetual students, gobbling up knowledge just to have it and then there are others who learn new things all the time because it furthers a greater goal to create or do new things.  The important thing is that we continue to learn.  Don’t be deterred from doing anything because you don’t have the skill, just learn it.  The desire to accomplish something is the best motivator for learning something new.  Learn now before you just don’t have any more time.