October 16th, 2007 | 
Author: ro
Author: ro
I visited a school today where I’m doing some professional development in social studies (history). I was there talking about the importance of studying History (with the capital H) and I was listening to the students’ answers, I began to ask myself if there is a difference between knowing and learning. Obviously, if you have learned something, you know it. But if you “know” something, have you learned it? Is there an obvious answer to this question?
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I believe that you can “know” without “learning.” Think of human behavior in general. There are many things we actually come into this world knowing: eye movement, sound response, etc. We might not yet have learned how to process what we are absorbing, but we already know how to respond. I dunno. Maybe thats far fetched, but I do think you can know without learning, just as easily as you can learn without knowing.
Well, yes there is that kind of “knowing,” that primitive, animal-instinct type of knowing…I mean there are certain things that we all know, that we haven’t really learned and that no one has taught us, but we still know them.
Maybe the question is, what are those things?
Does this make any sense??
I think you have to learn something before you can know it. When you are little, you didn’t know the stove was hot until you learned by touching it. Good question!
I think they are different, knowing is someone that can recite stats to you, but learning is someone who can tell you the meaning behind those stats.
I’m liking Shane’s answer, except that one has to know the meaning of the stats in order to tell someone else. Which is learned. Similarly, knowing the stats to begin with required them to be learned. I’m wondering if the question itself might be changed to, “What is the difference between learning and memorizing?”
And here is another one for you. Can you think without the use of words?
Pax,
Nelson
I suppose this comes down to a fundamental difference between Knowledge and Experience. Though I lean more towards Shanes explanation, i think it might be a little polarizing.. I have found the each is nothing without the other… having Learned without knowing is to have had a pointless lesson.. however Knowing without learning makes that knowledge a waste as it can never properly be used. make sense?
Jamie:
firstly, thank you for visiting and commenting. I agree, we definitely need to learn, before we know…and for sure part of that learning can be painful (heh), but how is it that there are things we just know?
i missed me some musings! yay for hotties of the week!
xoxo
I tend to think it’s just a fundamental distinction between how you acquire any given bit of knowledge. For example, I “learned” about D-Day through history classes, documentaries, and listening to first person accounts. My uncle, however, “knows” about D-Day because he was there.
Interesting point of distinction, Tim. I’m wondering if it might just be a matter of perspective. To use your example, you learned about D-Day and you probably learned much more about the over-all structure and strategy and such than your Uncle. Yet he knows about his part in it better than anything you could have read.
Pax,
Nelson
My head’s spinning
Long time no see – am finally back in the blogger world