21) There is a Huge Difference Between “Studying” and “Learning”
“Data is not information, information is not knowledge, knowledge is not understanding, understanding is not wisdom.” ~Clifford Stoll
Studying something does not necessarily equate with “learning” it. Just because you finish a book doesn’t mean you’ve actually internalized its lessons and can apply them in your life.
To be clear, I LOVE reading and believe that books are one of the most important human inventions of all time, but we have to remember that the real “learning” happens out in the world, not on the page or in a classroom. We all know people who are book smart, yet street foolish. Knowledge alone is nothing until transformed to wisdom through life experience and personal experimentation.
This is especially true for the domain of foreign languages where learners often mistake “studying a language” for “acquiring a language”. The two are very different things. You can spend your whole life studying Japanese, for example, and acquire very little. This is because languages are not a set of facts to be memorized, but a complex skill that arises through physical, cognitive, and psychosocial practice, not academic study. My favorite analogy is that trying to learn a language through formal study alone is like trying to learn how to drive by reading the car’s owner manual.
“Language is not a cultural artifact that we learn the way we learn to tell time or how the federal government works. Language is a complex, specialized skill, which develops in the child spontaneously, without conscious effort or formal instruction, deployed without awareness of its underlying logic…” ~Stephen Pinker, author of The Language Instinct
Next: 22) Wisdom = Knowledge + Experience Return to the List
