Reinventing Learnability

 Manpower describes Learnability as “the ability and desire to quickly grow and adapt one’s skillset to stay employable for the long-term.”

I agree, however, being employable but unhappy, anxious, lacking job satisfaction, overworked and "just getting by" doesn’t sound great.

I would agree that for technological hard skills, adapting your knowledge to new software, new programs, etc. is definitely necessary. But there are soft skills that are timeless, skills that are unchanging, and can be applied to the person, the human being acting in the role of the employable.

Our capacity to learn is typically organic if we know our strengths, our purpose and our passion. Our capacity to learn is a means to the end, the outcome, the goal. Imagine a group of children trying to invent a go-cart of types. They figure it out, as a means to the end; the thrill of flying down the road as fast as they can!

Let’s reinvent the term “Learnability”:

Learnability is the process of learning to be self-taught, self-directed and manage pragmatic, practical skills, as a means to your conscious objective. Learnability is taking responsibility for your own mind.

There is much debate about our education system, arguments that have already been made. In fact, I spent many years trying to make a point of these arguments and make changes within the public education system, to no avail. It reminds me of a quote by Rumi: “Yesterday I was clever, so I wanted to change the world. Today I am wise, so I am changing myself”.

So, as I grow, I figure the objective is not to change the system, but provide tools of learning so that each individual can take their power back and teach themselves anything they need to know at any given moment. Alvin Toffler, the well-known futurist, made one of the more prescient observations. “The illiterate of the 21st century,” Toffler wrote, “will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn and relearn.”

This is very true.

The Learnability Network is a non-profit based on the great objective, our innate calling, to support people in their quest for self-mastery and Learnability. Knowledge belongs to everyone.

The Learnability Network uses a system, reinvented and modernized, of the most ancient techniques of learning in our history: Trivium and Quadrivium, Liberal Learning techniques. Jarett Sanchez wrote a very interesting essay about Trivium Learning “Learning Skills and the Trivium”. In his essay, Jarett Sanchez recognizes the effort to keep knowledge in the hands of the “higher economic classes” (referred to as the elite):

“There is no moral code that is guaranteed with the Trivium. By keeping this education in the hands of the elites and away from the common folk, a great treasure has been deprived from the very people that need to be uplifted by it the most. What is left out of education is sometimes more important than what is included! Even providing “the people” with some parts of a liberal education is not enough, for what good is a citizenry that can reason well and use poetic language but that cannot engage in civic duties effectively? Providing the semblance of education without the tools of social construction gives only the illusion of education.”

So, it is our own responsibility to take the tools of learning. It is our own responsibility to teach ourselves how to learn. Today, I believe, it is a means of survival.