If Counselling Is Learning, What Kind of Learning?
Counselling may be a kind of learning process — of learning to live differently. But what kind of learning is this? The kind of learning we do in school? Or some other kind?
In an earlier post I asked, “Is Counselling Learning?” (see “Is Counselling Learning?”). In the comments (which are great, please read them if you have the time), Sarah Luczaj raised the question: What kind of learning? She pointed out that most of the learning we do is outside schools.
I think Sarah has made an excellent point. This post is my response to Sarah’s question.
Firstly, the kind of learning that counselling is about involves personal change — living differently to a lesser or greater extent. This is wildly different to memorising content in one place (e.g., a classroom) and reproducing it another place (e.g., an exam room).
It is closer to vocational education and professional development, which are (or perhaps should be) concerned with learning how to do things — and learning how to improve the way we do them. [It is my conviction that vocational education needs radical modification so that it is ethically informed and oriented to making the future -- but that is a subject for another post.]
It is also closer to learning a sport or a hobby. This is usually not structured in the academic way but rather as a graduated series of tasks that are to be done — for example, in learning the piano a set of progressively more difficult pieces, or in the martial arts a series of movements or opponents.
But these kinds of education have an external curriculum which the student learns. In counselling this is usually not the way it is done. In an important sense I think in counselling, the client sets ‘the curriculum’.
So my second answer to Sarah’s question is that counselling is about learning in the way children learn, before formal education. In this situation there is some sense of what the child should be doing or who they should become (e.g., learning to walk, speak, eat and so on). In an important sense, the care-givers (usually) follow the development of the child. There is no rigid timetable, no formal exams. In an important sense, the child sets ‘curriculum’.
Another similarity with children’s education before schooling is that it is the development of the child that is the aim. Care-givers are usually keen to see the child’s individuality. This is celebrated. The aim of this kind of education is the development of the child: the goal is that the person becomes who they are.
There is a difference, though: children are experiencing things for the first time. The adults who come to counselling usually have established ways of feeling, thinking and behaving. Unlearning is likely to be a part of counselling that has no parallel in the early learning of children.
The education of children before schooling involves a huge investment of time and energy by individuals. This is my problem with this as a model of education for counselling: it would be very expensive.
So I’d like to ask you. Would you like to see counselling done in an educational way? Do you think this could be done in a way that was affordable for most people?
Other articles by Evan Hadkins
This article was last reviewed by Dr Greg Mulhauser, Managing Editor on Tuesday, 18th November 2008. You can leave a reply below.
The URL of this page is:
http://counsellingresource.com/features/2008/11/18/what-kind-of-learning/
1st December 2008
Hi Evan – sorry not to have responded when you devoted a whole post to answering me :-) I was away from home and computer land…
I think you make some excellent points about unlearning.
I don’t think that you actually need to ‘do’ counselling in an educational way – I feel that at the heart of therapy – explicitly in the person centred approach I trained in but increasingly I think good therapy is just good therapy – is facilitating the client’s dropping of the unhelpful things they have learnt so that they can regain their innate abilities to sense, interpret and act out of their own experience, with curiosity and all their intelligence unblocked, in the same way that children learn to speak, walk etc. You don’t need to educate a child to speak or walk, just need to create good conditions for it to come about, love, support, stimulation. Then it happens by itself.
I think if clients want to be explicit about what they are learning then that is great, and if not, not.
1st December 2008
Hi Sarah,
Like you I think the heart of counselling is about finding themselves and dropping the accretions (my way of putting it – I hope this reflects your understanding).
Like the human centred therapies I think we have an innate sense of growth and it is about supporting this.
I guess I think therapy is about this human contact.
My guess is that I have a sense that learning lies closer to our core than you do. (I think ‘teaching’ lies at the heart of who I am – though by this I mean real encounter on an issue of concern, rather than schooling and formal arrangements.
I think too this goes to the heart of some understanding of what a person is and their relationship to their culture. Part of me thinks this would be a worthwhile topic for a post, another part of me thinks it is just too abstract and so not really worth doing. What do you think?
If you have more to say about this I’d love to hear. I hope you had a good time away from home and computerland.
5th December 2008
thanks Evan, I did have a good time, at a conference on buddhism and psychology. I am about to disappear again from tomorrow until january!
I am a bit intrigued by your comment
“My guess is that I have a sense that learning lies closer to our core than you do.” do you mean learning as a process of gaining information from someone else? I think learning is pretty close to the core – maybe at the core of what makes us human. I don’t think it is a one way exchange though, teacher and learner. Being able to be curious and therefore learn is what happens when we get ‘unstuck’…not quite sure what I am saying here, but yes,please write more on the topic there seems to be something more to be found here.
5th December 2008
Hi Sarah,
Hope you have a great holiday. Hope we can continue our discussion when you get back.