The American Society for Training and Development (ASTD) is again celebrating employee learning in organizations with their Employee Learning Week (ELW) program from December 5-9, 2011. As their website describes, “Employee Learning Week is an awareness campaign highlighting the important connection between learning and achieving organizational results.” For organizations, recognition of ELW can range from actual learning events to simple initiatives such as sharing tips, increasing awareness, or spotlighting a learning program – see the list of ideas that ASTD provides as well as materials they provide to assist.

Many local ASTD chapters participate in ELW by having special programs or networking events. As an example, my local ASTD chapter (Genesee Valley ASTD, which covers the greater Rochester, NY area) will be hosting a social networking event, and we’ve been gathering up Learning and Development tips and best practices to share back to our members throughout the week. If you live in the United States, I encourage you to check and see what your local ASTD chapter is doing to recognize ELW.

For my part, I thought I’d recognize and celebrate Employee Learning Week by sharing a collection of my favorite quotations about education, learning, and development. I’ll start off with this classic:

• “In times of change, learners inherit the earth; while the learned find themselves beautifully equipped to deal with a world that no longer exists.” – Eric Hoffer

This is a classic statement of the need to “learn how to learn,” rather than (only) stuffing one’s head full of facts and procedures that can become outdated. Of course, some amount of factual knowledge is needed to live, to do one’s job, and so on, but maintaining and improving your ability to learn more in the future is also critical.

• “To conserve a physical resource, you must limit its use. To conserve knowledge, you must increase its use.” – Unknown

This is a great retort to anyone who persists in “knowledge hoarding” in your organization, or who advocates systems that will clearly result in the same.

Next are four quotations I like that focus on the practical value of learning – and they apply as much to organizations as to individuals.

• “The only thing worse than learning from experience is not learning from experience.” – Unknown
    
• “An organization’s ability to learn, and translate that learning into action rapidly, is the ultimate competitive advantage.” – Jack Welch
    
• “Learning is like rowing upstream; not to advance is to drop back.” – Chinese Proverb
    
• “Learning is not compulsory… neither is survival.” – W. Edwards Deming

Two other classic quotations are:

• “Where my reason, imagination, or interest were not engaged, I would not or I could not learn.” – Winston Churchill
    
• “Live as if you were to die tomorrow. Learn as if you were to live forever.” – Gandhi

   
   
Another quote is somewhat humorous, at least in the context where I heard it:

• “If you question training, you only train yourself in asking questions.” – The Sphinx, from the movie Mystery Men

That is one of many deep-sounding statements from this character in the film. In a certain context, one can “question training,” for example, where formal training is not a good solution for the problem at hand. But in other contexts this is a pretty profound quip: if you do not seek out training/learning/education, you will remain ignorant and full of questions.
   

I’ll now close this collection with one of my own. No doubt you’ve heard of the philosopher René Descartes‘ famous line “I think, therefore I am” (first written in French, and then later as the famous Latin dictum “Cogito ergo sum.”) He used that in the context of trying to provide a firm footing for knowledge, starting with the philosophical question of his own existence. He was noting that if you were to wonder whether or not you exist, you have by that very act alone proved that you do exist (you are the “I” who is doing the thinking).

Without delving further into Descartes’ use of this famous phrase, I’ll note that I’ve often flipped it around to make a normative suggestion, both to myself and others: “I am, therefore I should think!” In the context of education, learning, and development, I substitute learning for thinking:

• “I am, therefore I should learn!”

What do you think? Do you have another quotation on education, learning, or development that you love? Please share in the comments.