No one would think of lighting a fire today by rubbing two sticks together Yet much of what passes for education is based on equally outdated concepts Gordon Dryden, The Learning Revolutio

We all go to school, where we learn subject like science and history. We also develop various skills, mostly related to subject but also some life skills. Strangely, however, very few people meet have ever been taught how to learn. We talk about literacy and numeracy—but what about “learnacy”

When I talk to audiences I ask them which they think is th most important part of their body when it comes to learning. No surprisingly, they point to their heads. I then ask them how much time they spent at school or college or business school learning about their minds and there is an embarrassed and, increasingl these days, a worried silence. People are beginning to understand the real importance of the concept of learnacy, first talked about by Guy Claxton a few years ago

The situation is similar across organizations of all kinds There is much talk of global marketplaces, performance, cost cutting knowledge management, culture, values, leadership development and so on. But in most cases, how you might use you mind to learn to perform more effectively is simply not on th agenda

It is as if there is a conspiracy of silence when it comes t learning to learn. We invest huge sums of money in busines processes, in research and development, in computer systems, an in management training, but almost nothing in understanding ho the minds of our employees and colleagues work—or, indeed, ho our own mind functions

Nevertheless, talk to most managers today and it is the qualit of their people that is apparently critical to their success. The ol ingredients like price and product are taking second place to the wa your people deal with your customers. This unique resource—people’ ability to learn—is arguably the only source of competitive advantag naturally available to all organizations, and it is so often ignored There can be little doubt that how we learn is central to succes in today’s fast-changing world. As the great educator John Hol put it in the 1960s

Since we cannot know what knowledge will be most needed in the future, i is senseless to try and teach it in advance. Instead we should try to turn ou people who love learning so much and learn so well that they will be able t learn whatever needs to be learned

This is as true today as it was 40 years ago. But our understandin of how our brains work has advanced along with the extraordinar speed of technical change, so that common sense and science ma well have caught up with each other at last