ON NOT LEARNING BY DEGREES . . .

        Several years ago,  a minister showed me the small library he had  acquired when a student at Duke University Divinity School.
He then boasted that he had not reread nor considered any of them useful since.  He implied that he had his degree and his education and did not want to be bothered with further learning.

      In the past two posts, I have made references to Joan Chittister's The Gift of Years: Growing Older Gracefully.  This book of  reflections on various issues associated with aging has stimulated several personal 'inventories' recently.  Reading her comments on "Learning" reminded me of the above mentioned minister who apparently felt that he had learned all he needed to know.  By contrast, she noted as a "danger" the assumption that with the completion of high school or college "we have completed our preparation for life.  The problem with degrees", she added, "is that they wear out quickly or prepare us for only one small area of life, at best." [p. 95]

    Illustrative, perhaps, was the good-natured lampooning of an instructor at a geriatric conference that I attended over  a dozen years ago.  Gil (not his name) was a physician who lectured on physiological changes brought on by aging.  In our 'Fun Night' skit at the end of the two-week course, one of the students playing our teacher groused that "half of today's knowledge was unknown at the time I received my degree; a quarter of what I learned I have forgotten, and another quarter has been superseded by new discoveries.  Consequently, I know nothing !"

    There is an outworn adage to the effect that "you can't teach an old dog new tricks".  The obvious conclusion in human terms is that mental acuity diminishes with accumulated birthdays.  The antidote to the error in the adage is that "an old dog can learn new tricks, provided two conditions: The old dog has 'half a brain' and the old dog wants to learn new tricks.  Ms Chittister again: "Neurological research now confirms that old brains are indeed physically smaller, but no less intellectually  competent than younger ones.  And in some ways, in terms of reflection and creativity, they are even better, if for no other reason than that they have a lot of experience to add to intellectual acuity."  [p. 96]

     Not to be flippant about the tragedies of various forms of dementia,  most 'old dogs' have the capacity to learn those 'new tricks'.  It seems that the keeping the 'want to' alive and fed that is crucial, for as Ms Chittister observed "ongoing learning saves the aging from becoming more  fossilized than transformed.  The problem with aging is not age, it is petrification, rigidity of soul, inflexibility.  Only ideas keep ideas flowing.  When we close our minds to what is new, simply because we decide not to bother with it, we close our minds to our responsibility to ourselves --and to others-- to keep on growing." [p. 98]

     Since my mid-20's, I have remained grateful for the influence of the Reverend William Jenkins, a then 89 year old retiree, who would  borrow my texts or supplementary readings and upon returning them would inquire , "What do you think Paul Tillich meant  by such and such ?"

   While the topic probably will not be some point in Tillich's  theology, like Mr. Jenkins, there is still a lot that I want to know.

    What kind of 'new tricks' do you want to learn?

        Satchel