Stages of Learning: Cultivating Mastery, from Interest to

Creative Freedom
Brian Frank
May 3, 2009

I. Introduction

In The Aims of Education, Alfred North Whitehead argued there's a "rhythm of education." It
starts with a stage of romance in which the student is excited by novelty, followed by a
stage of precision in which analysis and formulation occur. The full fruition of education
doesn't happen until the third and final stage, which Whitehead called generalization: "a
return to romanticism with the added advantage of classified ideas and relevant technique."

Most of what we would call education happens in the stage of precision -- but the first stage
is actually just as important. Without first going through a stage of romance to get a
general sense of the subject matter "it is simply a series of meaningless statements about
bare facts, produced artificially and without any further relevance."

Think of learning to play guitar. The stage of romance involves starting to love certain
songs, heroizing the talents of favourite players, rocking a lot of air guitar, etc. The stage of
precision involves actually getting an instrument, playing scales, learning theory and
technique, etc. The stage of generalization involves performing with others, writing your
own songs, etc.

Getting a little more complex, Whitehead suggested that these stages continuously reoccur,
with cycles-within-cycles (and with life being one "grand cycle" from the romance of
childhood, through the precision of later school years, and the generalization of adulthood).

So I broke these stages down so that each stage of the cycle is its own cycle, making nine
stages altogether. I prefer to use "passion, discipline, and fruition" rather than "romance,
precision, and generalization." Here's how it breaks down:

1. Interest (germinal passion)

2. Engagement (deliberate passion)
3. Appreciation (masterful passion)
4. Comprehension (willful discipline)
5. Articulation (precise discipline)
6. Utilization (realized discipline)
7. Adventure (willful extension)
8. Reorientation (critical assessment)
9. Creative freedom (masterful fruition)

(I'm going to use learning to play guitar as an example throughout.)

When we talk about learning we tend to focus on the middle three stages: comprehension,
articulation, and utilization -- aka, rudiments & fundamentals, theory, and practice (usually
all at once). That kind of education is fine if you're just looking for a mediocre, good-enough
degree of mastery. People who truly excel at something start learning well before their
formal lessons, and continue long afterwards.
II. The Nine Stages

1. Interest: this is the stage when you start to notice something grabbing your attention.
If you're walking along and your eye is caught by a concert poster, or if over the din of a
party you notice a conversation about music and are spontaneously drawn into it, or if you
find yourself remembering guitar parts and humming them throughout the day.

2. Engagement means deliberately acting on interest. After seeing that concert poster you
actually go to the concert, you participate in conversations about music, going out of your
way to be in places (with certain people) where those conversations are most likely to
occur, and listening to songs over-and-over -- trying harder to hear the guitar parts more
exactly.

3. Appreciation means starting to get a sense of quality. It means developing a "taste,"

but more importantly it means knowing who the experts are. At this stage your own
judgement isn't very trustworthy, so the focus should be on working out whose knowledge
you trust. You'll idolize, say, Jimi Hendrix and Jimmy Page. You'll read Guitar World (or
something) religiously while exploring the rest of the magazine rack, devouring knowledge
and exploring the field. You might be settling on a teacher, a mentor, bandmates, and a
circle of like-minded student-friends.

4. Comprehension: once you've acquired a sense of what you like and who to trust, you
can start to put it all together (which is what the word comprehension essentially means:
"grasping together"). It's important to get a sense of something whole before starting a
systematic course of study, otherwise most of what you learn will seem irrelevant and will
quickly be lost. You won't know everything, but when something new comes along you'll
know roughly where to put it or where to look for more background.

5. Articulation: usually the most hated of all stages of learning -- all of the classification
and theory and memorization of rules, etc. That's all that needs to be said about it for now.

6. Utilization: it's probably impossible to go through any of the first stages without using
or applying knowledge in some way, but at this point it becomes the primary focus. Hard
work has already been invested and is starting to pay off.

Congratulations, you're a guitarist! You have a regular gig with a cover band, making
decent money -- relative to amount of work you (don't) do. You also teach lessons and work
part-time in a guitar shop. All of your income is from music -- most of which you invest in
gear to record all the songs you're writing. In the technical sense of the word, you're a
professional.

But you still have a lot to learn -- starting by unlearning most of what you already know...

7. Adventure: find challenges -- and not just the technical kind. Sure you can thrash better
than anyone else you know, but how's your tone? Can you move people emotionally or
simply make them say "wow" for five minutes? Do non-musicians listen to you? Are people
humming your music throughout the day? Is your original work distinctive and original, or is
it derivative and contrived?
This is where big investments in the first few stages begin to really pay off. If you started
playing guitar because you wanted to be the second-coming of Dimebag Darrell, and you're
whole education was about learning Dimebag's technique, then eventually that's going to
generate constraints -- likewise if you concentrated too much on emulating Stevie Ray
Vaughan or Andres Segovia or whoever (though you could do a lot worse, no doubt). The
broader the better.

8. Reorientation is like discarding your old maps and theories and finding your way around
with just your wits -- covering everything again from the ground-up. Make your own trails,
leave your own landmarks, draw new maps and theories to include what you've learned and
what you want to teach others.

The adventure stage was about wandering and discovering new challenges and
opportunities. The reorientation stage is sort of the same but it introduces the element of
discipline, making adventure more systematic, articulate, and objective.

9. Creative freedom means you're no longer constrained by habits or limited knowledge.

When something new comes along -- a new style or technique -- you have enough
knowledge to have a conversation about how it developed; you can accommodate it into
your own music, you can appreciate it right away and master it with a little bit of practice.

It also means you're free to decide not to learn something new; you're able to explain why
you don't like it or why it doesn't fit in with what you do. But even if you choose not to
adopt a new style, the scene as a whole might evolve because of it; you'll still have to adapt
to changes even if you don't necessarily approve of, or embrace them.

Most importantly, with creative freedom, it's still fun. You're still interested and willing to be
engaged, and this passion generates enough energy to afford continued investment in
newer fields -- the business side of it, for example, or in promoting the greater good.

Because through it all you're not just learning how to play guitar (or how to be a designer,
or whatever), you're learning how to learn, how to be disciplined, how to be engaged, how
to articulate what you know, how to go beyond that, how to recognize challenges and
opportunities, how to live a fruitful and fulfilling life.

Adapted from the original blog post at http://openconceptual.com/2009/05/stages-of-learning/

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