Learning: Conscious or Non-conscious?

There are different findings among psychologists and educational practitioners on ‘how does learning take place?’ One of the findings is that, learning happens in a conscious attempt of the organism (a living thing). That means, learning is something intentionally conceived with the awareness of the surroundings and sensations and thoughts.

For decades this finding got acceptance among the academia, teachers and general public. But, in the second half of the 20^th century, this premise was questioned from different corners. The belief that learning is a conscious process had been shaken and the new parameters were formed as the rudiments of learning theories. One among this parameters is that, learning is non-conscious.

When somebody says learning is a conscious process, it has three assumptions;

a)   Organism does it intentionally.

b)   The providers (those who teach) give it so as to sensitize the organism of learning.

c)    The teaching system makes the organism aware of the need of learning and success of learning.

On the basis of above three assumptions, teachers or anybody who teach anything  think on the three following basic questions;

a)   What are you (learner) going to learn?

b)   What are you learning at present?

c)    What are yet to be learned?

Teacher’s planning for day-to-day classes, preparation for student assessment, and construction of learning materials, like; text books and practice books, were justifying this feature of consciousness.

a)             Consciousness is illogic

How does this feature of consciousness become illogic and unscientific?

The instance of language acquisition is a good one to show the baselessness of learning as a conscious attempt. One acquires one’s mother tongue in a non-conscious way. That means, child, the learner doesn't learn it intentionally. There are no teachers and formalities, like; text books, examinations, repetitions, drills for the child to acquire the mother tongue in the home atmosphere. The child interacts with the parents and relatives, plays with the peers or moves with the neighbours. In such contexts child operates the language in a non-conscious way. Those who interacts or talks with child do not sensitize the child of anything, like; structure, forms, tenses or grammar. Without such direct sensitization by anybody, children learn language of the region. Not only children, adults also learn a new language without direct teaching or sensitization. Almost all Indians migrated to the Gulf for job speak Arabic, which was an unfamiliar language for them before they reach there.

But on the other hand, the writer of this blog had seen big failures in the attempts of learning Hindi by the people in non-Hindi regions of India, though years of formal teaching was given to the learners. This type of dichotomies might have been noted by you, readers also.

So from the above analysis, one thing that we derive is, the way of language learning that human nature demands is non-consciousness.

b)        Non-consciousness is natural

From the above analysis, yet another question arises is that, is non-consciousness applicable only for language learning? No, this feature of learning is applicable with day-to-day life learning activities of cooking, cleaning or washing. There are elements of learning with all these activities. But, nobody is conscious of the elements of cutting vegetables, putting the vessel over the stove or adding the ingredients, in the case of cooking. The person, e.g. mother in the house who cooks curry has only an intention to complete a successful cooking before the guest arrives. She is not at all conscious about the activities of   cutting vegetables, putting the vessel over the stove or adding ingredients. Her thought might be about serving the tasty food to the guest.

With such attempts in other occasions, she learns cooking in a non-conscious way. There is no conscious attempts of learning of cooking in terms of rules and taste of ingredients.

Likewise, one acquires to use the complicated functions of the smart phone within a short period of time, in a non-conscious way. When call comes or alert of SMS is heard, the user’s conscious mind gets ready to respond the communication, she/he forgets how the phone works. The operation of functions becomes non-conscious process to her/him.

So we can reach the conclusion that in nature, learning process is always non-conscious, when it is made conscious the result will be too little. If there are conscious attempts, the organism will identify and repel the content to be learned.   

This variation between conscious and non-conscious attempts be clearly understood by the teachers and pedagogy planners. Then only they can plan the classroom process so as to provide experiences to make learning a non-conscious attempt from the part of the learner.