The Lifelong Learner

As opposed to the righteous, closed-minded activist

I believe that educators should aim to encourage lifelong learning. The mission of encouraging social activism conflicts with that. The social activist implicitly says, “I know enough already. Let me fix society.” Rather than cater to that mindset, educators should lean against it.

A social activist might respond that there are wrongs in the world and we must confront them. Educators need to model standing up against wrongs. If you merely encourage students to question their own beliefs, to be open minded, and to consider different perspectives, they will become passive in the face of injustice. Instead, educators should inspire students to be idealistic and to act on the basis of those ideals.

My reply is that it is easy to be self-righteous and closed-minded without bringing about a better world. Hitler was self-righteous and closed-minded. Lenin was self-righteous and closed-minded. Hamas is self-righteous and closed-minded.

Human improvement has come from learning. We learned how to achieve better health and greater longevity. We learned how to grow enough food so that people do not have to go hungry. We learned how to cooperate in large societies.

But we do not know everything that we need to know in order to live better. Both individually and collectively, we have more to learn. We have more to learn today, and we will have more to learn tomorrow.

To learn requires an open mind. My father, Merle Kling, used to say that the First Iron Law of Social Science is “Sometimes it’s this way, and sometimes it’s that way.” My undergraduate economics professor, Bernie Saffran, would say “I’m willing to be wrong,” meaning that his ideas were open to challenge. My graduate adviser, Robert Solow, said in his address to the American Economic Association that government intervention in markets is neither always right nor always wrong.

If you study with a great professor of the Classics, that professor will help you to understand what you can learn from Plato. If you study with a great empirical researcher, that researcher will help you to understand how to learn from data. If you study with a great scientist, that scientist will help you to understand how you can learn from theory and observation. If you study with a great engineer, that engineer will help you to understand how you can learn to make better material things. If you study with a great executive, that executive will help you to understand how an organization can learn to be more effective.

The greatest people in business, sports, and culture never stop learning. They constantly strive to enhance their capabilities.

One way to identify talent early is to spot someone who acquires deep domain knowledge at a young age. For example, I was told that when Sam Altman was 19, he had an idea for a business involving location services. When he pitched the idea to venture capitalists, they were skeptical that someone that young would understand all of the technical issues involved. But he could answer all of their questions.

It looks to me as though colleges are doing a lot to discourage young people from learning. The mission of lifelong learning is a higher mission than social justice activism. Colleges took a wrong turn when they focused on social justice activism.

I believe that the Internet has the potential to make lifelong learning much easier. It makes more information available. It makes it possible to connect with people at a distance. We should be experimenting with approaches to higher education that take better advantage of the Internet. And now that chatbots have shown promise, we should be experimenting with approaches to higher education that take advantage of those as well.