Chief Learning Officer - October 2008 - (Page 4)

EDITOR’S LETTER The Real Root of All Evil a girl of an indeterminate age “I’m bored!” hissed away from me at the Chicago sitting a few rows Symphony. Clearly, she was not a classical music lover and had been dragged to the concert by a well-meaning parent who hoped to exert a civilizing inﬂuence on her life. It wasn’t working. Given the girl’s high-pitched, accusing tone of voice, someone unfamiliar with the English language (or modern American culture) might have concluded she was being tortured instead of entertained. My ﬁrst reaction to her outburst was, “There are worse things than being bored, young lady!” (All right, I confess that was my second reaction — the ﬁrst being a rather harsh thought of which I am not proud.) Then I remembered fourth grade and Mrs. Nash, the most boring teacher on the planet. Instantly, I was overcome again by the sinking sense of despair I felt in her classroom. As she droned on and on, day after day, like some decrepit wind-up toy, the hours dragged and my mind drifted out of the window. My vivid recollection of that tortuous school year got me thinking about this thing called boredom and how it affects learning. Boredom certainly is not a new bane, nor does it only afﬂict the young. For centuries, adults have denounced it with as much — if not more — drama than the bored girl forced to endure a bit of Bach. In the 19th century, Danish philosopher Soren Kierkegaard called it “the root of all evil,” and poet William Wordsworth wrote that it was a “savage torpor.” Canadian Charlotte Whitton, an active and vocal feminist politician in the 1950s, claimed that boredom is “like a pitiless arrow zooming in on the epidermis of time.” Using a simpler and less literary deﬁnition, a state of boredom results when the brain concludes there is nothing new or useful it can learn from what’s happening around it, so it gets restless, frustrated and almost desperate for relief. And it happens faster than you might think. Dr. John Medina is director of the Brain Center for Applied Learning Research at Seattle Paciﬁc University. In his recent book, Brain Rules, he offers a list of what scientists know for sure about how our brains function. Rule No. 4: Brains don’t pay attention to boring things. According to Medina, “we have about a 10-minute attention span before our minds wander off in search of something new and exciting.” Other experts, such as Dr. Ellen Weber, president and CEO of MITA International Brain Based Renewal 4 Chief Learning Ofﬁcer • October 2008 • www.clomedia.com Center and a frequent contributor to the “Brain Based Business” blog, claim it takes only four to eight minutes of listening to a conventional lecture before even “the brightest brains in the room” start looking for adventure. “It’s not necessarily that all speakers bore listeners,” Weber recently wrote on the blog, “but more the fact that brains were not made to be lectured to.” Indeed, research has demonstrated it is necessary to gain the brain’s full attention and active participation in order for the dynamic process of learning to take place. Yet, too many learning experiences continue to be passive — such as lectures, or what one anonymous pundit described as “a means of transferring notes from the pages of the speaker to the pages of the audience, without going through the mind of either.” That’s not to condemn all lectures. A great lecture can be illuminating, inspiring and life-changing. It can empower people to acquire new information, understand difﬁcult concepts, organize thinking, promote problem solving and challenge attitudes. But only if it isn’t boring — if it arouses curiosity, encourages involvement and delivers more knowledge than can be gained from merely reading a book or going online. One article I read recently offered ideas for making lectures more motivating. The author suggested using quotations. So I want to share a few salient quotes in the hopes they will get you thinking about boredom, too, and how to make sure there’s nothing boring about the learning you’re delivering to your organization. “Tell me and I forget. Show me and I remember. Involve me and I understand.” – Chinese proverb “Perhaps the world’s second worst crime is boredom. The ﬁrst is being a bore.” – British artist Sir Cecil Beaton “The cure for boredom is curiosity. There is no cure for curiosity.” – American writer Dorothy Parker Norm Kamikow Editor in Chief norm@clomedia.com http://www.clomedia.com

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Chief Learning Officer - October 2008

Chief Learning Officer - October 2008 Editor’s Letter Connections Business Impact Best Practices Effectiveness Guest Editorial How Fast Is Your ‘B’ Team? Hampton Hotels CLO Profile Save the World, Make a Buck: Seven Ideas From the Nonprofit Sector Developing Leaders at Amnesty International Learning Measurements: It’s Time to Align Aligning Measurement to Business Success Training Employees With Special Needs How to Reach Disabled Learners Hands Off: Facilitating Informal Learning Who Owns Informal Learning? Case Study Business Intelligence Advertisers’ Index Editorial Resources In Conclusion

Chief Learning Officer - October 2008

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