The 7 Laws of the Learner

Tom Friedman, author of the best selling book The World Is Flat 3.0: A Brief History of the Twenty-first Century says the most important skill you can have as you tackle the challenges of the 21st century is the ability to "learn how to learn." Sometimes referred to as "being a lifelong learner."

Dr. Bruce Wilkinson gives principles we can apply to help us be lifelong learners in his book, The Seven Laws of the Learner: How to Teach Almost Anything to Practically Anyone. While this book is intended to help educators become better teachers, the principles , or laws, he presents can be slightly modified and applied to our own learning.

For instance, Law One: The Law of the Learner's first maxim is "Teachers are responsible to cause students to learn." If I apply that to myself it means I am responsible for my own learning. I can't expect someone else to learn for me and then just give me the cliff notes. I have to want to learn about something.

Or Law Four: The Law of Retention's second maxim is "Retention of facts is effective only after they are understood." If I apply this to myself it means I am responsible to understand the relevance of what I am learning to my life. This one seems to be much easier now that I no longer sit in a classroom "learning" what someone else thinks is important. Now I am learning what I think is important. I should believe the subject is relevant before I begin to study it.

The Seven Laws of the Learner: How to Teach Almost Anything to Practically Anyone contains seven laws of the learner. Mindsets, models, maxims, methods and maximizers are suggested for each law. Each law includes 7 maxims to help understand the mindsets and models and 7 maximizers to help understand the methods.

Wilkinson is the creator of the popular "Walk Thru the Bible" series. Using the principles in this book, he has created a program where you can learn the major events of the Old Testament in a one day session. Or if you like, you can learn the major events of the New Testament in a one day session. I attend both sessions over 25 years ago and was able to see these principles in action.

I've even had the opportunity to apply some of these principles when leading workshops or teaching classes. I've had success using them to teach others and I've had success applying them to my own learning process.

Wilkenson's 7 laws are:

Law One: The Law of the Learner
Law Two: The Law of Expectation
Law Three: The Law of Application
Law Four: The Law of Retention
Law Five: The Law of Need
Law Six: The Law of Equipping
Law Seven: The Law of Revival

Should you find yourself in the position where you need to teach others, or

Should you find yourself in the position where you need to keep learning (which is all of us)

I highly recommend you read this book!

The Seven Laws of Teaching

Today let's see what we can learning from the education field. John Milton Gregory worked for 13 years to establish the foundation of the University of Illinois upon its conception in 1868. He was by all rights, an educational leader during his time. In 1884, he published The Seven Laws of Teaching.

Recognized as a timeless masterpiece, Gregory's book has been used as a staple to train 1000s of educators. In some way, all great leaders engage in the work of teaching. So the principles in this book have value for the leader.

The seven laws are to seven factors in teaching:
1. Two personal factors -- a teacher and a learner,
2. Two mental factors -- a common language of communication and a lesson to be communicated, and
3. Three functional processes -- acts of the teacher, acts of the learner, and a final act to test the result of the educational process.

The seven laws then as they are stated in The Seven Laws of Teaching. are:

1. A teacher must be the one who knows the lesson to be taught.

2. A learner is one who pays attention to the lesson.

3. The language used must be familiar to both the teacher and the learner.

4. The lesson must be explainable in terms of what the learner already knows.

5. A teacher must excite the learner and engage the learner's mind to grasp the desired truth.

6. A learner must think into one's own understanding the new truth.

7. The test of the teaching is the application of the new truth.

Gregory identifies some practices necessary to the teaching process.

1. The teacher must know the subject being taught. (p. 28)
2. The learner must be able to link the new truth to the greater body of truth and establish necessary relationships in order to understand it. (p. 30)
3. The learner must pay attention to the material to be learned. (p. 37)
4. The two chief hindrances to attention are apathy and distraction. (and he wrote this over 125 years ago! Some things never change, they only escalate. Some would say today we have more distractions and more apathy!) (p. 48)
5. Children are often compelled by their limited vocabulary to make incorrect word choices. (p. 57)
6. No teaching was ever more instructive than the parables of Jesus. (p. 61)

These are just a few of the gems found in this book. There are a total of 177 rules, principles and concepts included in this book. One hundred and twenty eight pages of educational leadership at your finger tips.

Enjoy it! I did.