End-of-the-semester thoughts: What have you learned from your life?
We were going to talk about "Learning and Conditioning" in my General Psych class. As an introduction to the topic, I asked them to enumerate the things they have learned since childhood. As expected, they came up with answers like "reading, riding a bike, singing, cooking, writing a good paper, doing math, etc.". I told them, "Good! But is that all? Are you sure you are not forgetting anything else?" I was hoping to get more answers that wouldn't fit into categories like abilities and skills and facts that they have learned from their more than ten years sitting inside a classroom. Silence. And so I asked them, "Have you not learned other things from outside the classroom?" More Silence. I proceeded to throw them a barrage of questions. How about the lessons you learned from your family - like loving and caring for others? From your mistakes, have you learned to rise above them so you don't do them again?