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I think instead of hands-on learning, we should rename it Learning by Doing as our overall theme. I am going to tie in Carl Rogers work into this theme. I am interested in how Carl Rogers, a humanist psychologist, viewed learning. The following quote piqued my interest in Rogers over five years ago. I will be using Internet resources as well as Rogers' books, "Freedom to Learn", "A Way of Being" and "On Becoming a Person". Carl Rogers Personal Thoughts of Teaching and Learning from On Becoming a Person My experience has been that I cannot teach another person how to teach. It seem to me that anything that can be taught to another is relatively inconsequential, and has little or no significant influence on behavior. I realize increasingly that I am only interested in learnings which significantly influence behavior. I have come to feel that the only learning which significantly influences behavior is self-discovered, self-appropriated learning. Such self-discovered learning, truth that has been personally appropriated and assimilated in experience, cannot be directly communicated to another. I realize that I have lost interest in being a teacher. I have come to feel that the outcomes of teaching are either unimportant or hurtful. I realize that I am only interested in being a learner, preferably learning things that matter, that have some significant influence on my own behavior. I find it very rewarding to learn. I find that one of the best, but most difficult ways for me to learn is to drop my own defensiveness, at least temporarily, and to try to understand the way in which his experience seems and feels to the other person. I find that another way of learning for me is to state my own uncertainties, to try to clarify my puzzlements, and thus get closer to the meaning that my experience actually seems to have. It seems to mean letting my experience carry me on, in a direction which appears to be forward, toward goals that I can but dimly define, as I try to understand at least the current meaning of that experience.
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