THEORIES OF LEARNING: Page 40

The basic fact they have in common is the simple truth that man does learn. He learns from the moment he is born. He learns through direct and indirect means, through formal and informal instruction. Sometimes he learns in spite of instruction. Sometimes he applies himself assiduously with discouraging results and other times he suddenly knows with little or no apparent effort. Sometimes he learns to be socially useful, sometimes he acquires skills which are adjudged harmful and negative. But he learns. Non-human animals learn too, and rats and dogs have contributed greatly to the formation of theories of learning. Machines have been devised to take over many of our thinking processes but the business of learning goes on in one form or another, in the course of growing and participating in life. But, how do we learn? True to his principles, Socrates thought of learning and of knowledge as part of universal and eternal verities. For him, man was simply an example of the truth of eternal knowledge. But the mechanism behind man's personal awareness of this knowledge was something that Socrates did not attempt to explain. For Plato the idea was supreme; only reason counted for anything. As for experience, it was merely a shadow of the idea of reality. Sensations and opinions, he held, are passing and unreliable. The immaterial essences— Forms or Ideas—were absolute for him, containing the only ultimate truth. While the Greeks are philosophically stimulating, they fail to answer our question. However, we must