Are you smarter than a fifth grader? Learning in childhood and adulthood

Have you ever watched the TV show Are You Smarter Than a 5th Grader? In this show, adult participants are quizzed on the subject of fifth grade textbooks, as opposed to a panel of fifth graders. Adults generally don’t do very well, while students shine. Why is this? Could adults, with much more education, including college degrees, know less than 10- and 11-year-olds? This program clearly points out some of the major differences between child learning and adult learning that I will discuss in this article.

Let’s start with a 4-stage learning model.

  • Stage 1: Data
  • Stage 2: Information
  • Stage 3: Knowledge
  • Stage 4: Wisdom

The first stage of learning is data collection. We are all inundated with data: every page we read, every email and text message, everything we listen to—indeed, everything our senses take in—is data. Elementary students are taught a great deal of data. Adults are inundated with data too, but while students are expected to absorb everything they are taught, adults look to data for relevance and purpose – they filter the data according to their needs and interests.

Management guru, the late Peter Drucker, said that when you give data relevance and purpose, you gain insights: the second stage of the learning model. Adults seek information. Children do not know what will be relevant and useful to their lives, so they absorb all the data that is given to them. As they mature into adults, much of the information they learned in school is stored in their brains so they can focus on what is relevant and useful to their lives. For some people, much of this data is buried deep in their long-term memories and can be remembered: these people become trivia experts and Jeopardy contestants. But for most people, much of the data absorbed in school is lost; that’s why the adults have such a hard time on the tv show.

The third stage of learning is knowledge. Knowledge comes from applying the information you have collected to your work or life. Until you apply that information, you can’t say you really know it. For example, I like to cook. I have watched many cooking shows on TV and they provide a lot of facts about recipes, ingredients, and cooking methods. Do I remember everything? No, I filter all that data by what I like to eat, the recipes I’d like to try become information for me, information that is relevant to my tastes in food and useful in the sense that I want to try making a particular recipe. . But only when I really taste the recipe and cook something can I say that know how to make that dish

The final stage of the learning model is wisdom. Wisdom comes from dialogue, demonstration, experience, and experimentation. For example, after preparing a dish several times, I may decide to try modifying the recipe by adding another spice or using different vegetables in the dish than are called for in the recipe. When I try these experiments, I learn what works for me and what doesn’t, and that becomes my personal wisdom.

Much of what you teach young children never gets beyond Stage 1 of the model data. They may find, for example, that the history of Native American tribes is interesting, but for most students the subject is not relevant to their lives and does not serve a purpose. In primary and secondary school, these data are prescribed by the school system according to the established curricula or what will be required in the tests.

As adults, we self-direct our learning. Even if our employer requires us to take a course on some topic, we filter what is taught by relevance and purpose to transform data into information. When we apply what we have learned to our work or to our lives, we transform it into personal knowledge. And as we gain experience using our knowledge and skills, we can develop some personal wisdom about what works and what doesn’t work for us in specific situations.

As children, our learning is directed by others. As adults, our learning is self-directed.

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