The Dangers of Being a Lifelong Learner
And why a little friction is necessary
It may be a vice of my noble intentions. It is likely what caused me to be all-in on homeschooling, or maybe being all-in on homeschooling led me to the vice. Or, possibly, it’s not a vice at all, but a virtue I have not virtuously developed.
I was a good student but not passionate. I wanted good grades more than I wanted to know and understand the material, and school rewarded my desire, priming me for the checkbox-life and performance-driven adulthood. When I became a Christian and a wife and a mom, all within about a 5 year span, I traded good grades and scholarships for completed to-do lists and perceived approval from God.
Then I found “Christian self-help”.
Then I found parenting books.
Then I found home education.
Then I found blogs.
It was a slippery slope to becoming a Lifelong Learner.
It sounds virtuous to be someone who wants to learn and understand better, and to recognize how much I still don’t know. Being a learner has always seemed like a much better posture than being someone who knows it all. But as I’ve said before, I use maybe and possibly and probably as insurance against assurance, and one of the pitfalls of always learning is never coming to knowledge of the truth (2 Timothy 3:7). I have to land somewhere, and be unafraid of changing my mind later.
Another pitfall of lifelong learning is lifelong not-doing. Preparation becomes an excuse to avoid starting, and because I am afraid of doing things wrong, I avoid the friction of action. I also avoid the friction of learning things I don’t want, but probably need to learn.1
And of course there’s the problem of thinking that learning stuff will help me be correct, and being correct will let me finally feel approved. I’m already approved. God calls me “good” and has this inexplicable grace to cover all the ways I could never be enough.
Learning is a bottomless pit made ever wider by the resources available to us. 25 years ago, the endless resources for home education came in giant catalogs in the mailbox, numerous opinions and options on blogs, and later, plenty of programs available for online education at home. I was inundated with information and to someone who wants to do everything right, that was overwhelming. I couldn’t afford—neither in time nor money—to test out every good resource and find the absolute best, for every child in every stage forever and ever. And the fact that there are so many free resources available is not a bonus, in my opinion. More is not better.
It took a few years but I began to funnel the resources and narrow the options. I unsubscribed from every catalog and stopped reading all the blogs, and I chose one good spine to guide us (The Well-Trained Mind by Susan Wise Bauer). I spent more money on good art supplies and less on promises and guarantees.
Every 3 months there was some new and exciting resource that would creep its way into my view, but when I was overwhelmed and overstimulated with the idea of all the greener grass, I came back to the basics: read good books, write or talk about them, and then go outside.2
There was good friction in the limits I imposed.
Our resources enable us to feel like we can learn anything, and most of it for absolutely free. Apart from homeschooling, I have free or inexpensive courses piled up on photography, writing, embroidery, art journaling, ancient history, home economics, small business management, Bible study, calligraphy, self-publishing, accounting, platform building, DIY furniture, DIY MFA, sewing, exercise programs, time management, productivity, and my newest obsession: oil painting. There is a free tutorial, online course, or YouTube rabbit hole just waiting for any spark of interest I might have. And if I don’t have one, the algorithm will present one for me.
The options are limitless but I am not. The internet will present me with every possibility, but I am not everywoman. I am narrow, niched down, funneled. And that’s good.
The heavens declare the glory of God, and the sky above proclaims his handiwork.
Day to day pours out speech, and night to night reveals knowledge.
There is no speech, nor are there words, whose voice is not heard.
Psalm 19:1-3 ESV
There is something spiritual in the desire to be a lifelong learner. This world is an amazing place to be plunked down in and I want to squeeze all the drips of wonder out of my place in it, because it helps me pay attention. Paying attention to what God created is what God deserves from me. Give me all the nature poems and plant identifications and every name of all the species lurking in the woods. Tell me how to attract the birds. Show me how to photograph the mist in the trees and the floating leaves and please please please can someone help me attract the wild animals so I can get their pictures but not be in danger?
Help me take better care of my dog, so she can enjoy the world with me longer. How do I make my home a place my grandkids beg to come to? What’s the best way to game the travel points system so Tim and I can enjoy traveling the world together once in awhile? There are so many good things to learn.
There is something spiritual in learning, but it is threatened with the shadow of always wanting to be better and make things easier, of acquiring knowledge for the sake of knowing, without taking action on that knowledge.
A few days ago I read an article I had saved about writing better personal essays. It was touted as a “beginner’s guide”, which highlights another vice in me when it comes to lifelong learning: I am not a beginner but I still wanted this information. That’s hard for me to say because I know I have room for improvement in my writing and thinking. But I have been consistently writing for 13 years. I have tutored dozens of children and teenagers in writing oodles of essays. I have read great books and taught through wonderful courses on essay writing. I know enough about essays to make me at least an intermediate, yet I fell for the promise of some shiny and new insight.
On top of all that, I am highly suspicious the article on writing better personal essays was written with AI.3 Double womp.
When I encounter the friction of a blank page or meandering thoughts that won’t fall into line, I look for ways to make the writing frictionless. Some key insight. Some fancy tools. A hack to make things easier. As a lifelong learner, if I do not take care to limit and develop my learning towards virtue, something frictionless like artificial intelligence could be a huge temptation.
Elizabeth Oldfield wrote a very human piece this week about her fall off the no-AI wagon and it made me ache with that sense of understanding you get when someone screws up in a way that you know you are prone to. Because of imposter syndrome. Because communicating is hard. Because we want hacks and shortcuts to greatness, or ease, or recognition. AI promises those things, and it may be easy to spot now but I suspect it is only getting better.4
The life we want is one full of the fruit of the Spirit—love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. Each one of those has a friction in it because there is an opposite fruit we could choose or allow. We make choices with friction. In the absence of it there is just freefall. Friction slows something down, and Lord knows we need to slow the heck down.
Hadden Turner says we need “frictionfulness” for the good life we seek.
This morning I chose a Pilates workout to do. I have done lots of workouts in my life but it’s been awhile since my core muscles were taxed, so I chose a “beginner” course. I’m not a beginner because I don’t know what to do; I’m a beginner because I haven’t done it in awhile and muscles get flabby faster and faster these days. By reason of steady use I can eventually progress to an intermediate course.
Being a lifelong learner is not a bad thing, and neither is being a beginner. But it’s the friction of doing things that makes the learning embodied. Join me in funneling the options down and adding some good friction.
In the wise words of Mrs. Frizzle, “Take chances, make mistakes, and get messy!”5
This is not a hypothetical “I”. It’s actually me—I’m the one guilty of this.
This was basically the way I gave grades to my kids, because if they could write and talk about what they had studied, and teach others, our goals were met. (Yes, we did state testing.)
Which I recognize because of my experience with good reading and writing—again, that’s hard for me to say because I know I have so far to go. False humility and all that.
Just to be clear, Oldfield is a writer and woman of integrity and did not publish anything written by AI. Her “fall of the wagon” was a fall from her own standards and parameters she’d set for herself, but she snapped back to her senses.
Apparently my grandsons love The Magic School Bus, Little Bear, and Gilmore Girls. I feel like this is a good balance.
I had to make a decision fairly early on that I am not a shiny curriculum person.
One hidden grace in our tiny house is that I have to think very hard about where homeschool materials will go. And despite the lack of all the best systems and courses and new things, my kids appear to be learning.
Another thing I’m learning to discern in this area is that researching beyond the point where I can actually take action just makes me feel guilty. I have spent years diving down health rabbit holes, for me and sundry children, but there is only so much of that you can put into action — you just have the 24 hours and your own limits. There might be a perfect solution, but if I can’t execute it in my real life that system is largely irrelevant.
Sigh! I can relate to this! I’m also leaning the truth of this: “The options are limitless but I am not.” It’s okay for me to set things aside and not try to learn it all. But there’s so much out there! And I want to be brilliant 😄.