Have you heard of Seth Godin? He’s an American author and entrepreneur who specialises in marketing strategies. Godin has written books and articles on marketing strategy, and he writes a daily blog, which goes out free to his thousands of subscribers.
Some of Godin’s blog posts are longish, but many are very short.
I was particularly taken by last Saturday’s post on learning and education. The difference (and the cross-over) between them.
Here’s what he said:
Education is free, learning is expensive
That’s a complete reversal of how it used to be.
Colleges used to be measured by how many books they had in the library. Access to courses was restricted. If knowledge was power, controlling access was essential.
They even call it the ‘admissions office.’
Part of the status that comes from higher education is that they controlled who could find the information and who was left behind.
Today, of course, all of the information is there, a click away. Billions of people have a smartphone with access to everything ever recorded and written, but also to a trillion dollar AI system that can offer informed guidance.
So why hesitate? Why do we get stuck or avoid even acknowledging that it’s possible?
Because learning is hard. It creates tension. It takes time. Most of all, it requires a commitment to becoming someone else, a bet we’re making that might not turn out the way we hope.
The system has called our bluff. If you want to learn, learn.
But we pay for it with effort.
I was very struck by this, particularly the idea of how we “pay” for learning.
We send our children to school to learn. If they attend a state school we don’t pay the school directly. If we ourselves attend, or used to attend, a state school, we consider(ed) our education to be “free”. Tax-payer funded, yes, but, in essence, free.
But attending the school, whether fee-paying or state-funded, does not guarantee learning. And that, Seth Godin say, does have to paid for. Not by the state. Not by the tax-payer. Not by our parents or other benefactors. We pay for it ourselves, Godin tells us, with effort.
This applies equally to music lessons. Piano, keyboard, theory, whatever. Are you learning? Are you “paying” enough? Could you try harder? Or try differently? Are you getting value for your effort?
If you’d like to know more about Seth Godin and his books, you can look here.
If you’re interested in subscribing to Seth Godin’s blog, you can do so here.
Humoresque = a whimsical or fanciful piece of music. Be whimsical, be fanciful, but play in time!
(Humoresque Number 11)