Life-Long Learning – A Journey to the Unknown

It was my first year in the Australian Regular Army. I was a young 23-year-old Lieutenant, in the Royal Australian Educational Corps. My job was to teach soldiers literacy and numeracy.

It was the first day of a corporal course; over fifty soldiers sitting in a computer classroom. The lesson was about how to write a one-page minute. It was not a hard task, something today, any soldier could produce in their sleep.

The soldiers had received the formal lesson, and it was time to commence the writing task. Soldiers quickly started turning on computers and tapping on the keys. Others were reading the referencing guide.

All except for one. He just sat there. He would have been late thirties. Tall, dark hair and the tan of a soldier who spent his life outdoors.

He had the same look on his face I have when I am asked to climb the obstacle course - utter fear. I walked over and turned his computer on. It still didn’t get him started. Bending down, I handed him my water bottle. I asked him to go fill it. He promptly gave me a “Yes Ma’am” and fled.

In the kitchenette, I asked him if he was ok. The tears started to well in his eyes, but he quickly wiped them. I knew exactly what was going on. He had never touched a computer.

Give him a gun and tell him to attack a hill - done. He was far from stupid. His skills just lay elsewhere. After a brief conversation, we ventured back into the classroom. Our course of action was to sit together and work through the problem. We began manoeuvring around the computer, simple tasks of how to click and open Word.

While he had to come back after class for two days to finish the task, he said to me on course graduation, he had learnt more on that day than the rest of the course. This was the start of a whole new journey.

A few years later, I had a visit from the same soldier. His son was in year 11 and was struggling. He himself had only gone to year nine and felt angry for not being able to help him. He wanted to go back to school. Over the course of two years, he worked on obtaining his year 10 certificate, then he tackled year 12.

I lost contact with him for a couple of years.

Then one day, I got an email. Not a phone call but an email. He wanted to go to university. We exchanged correspondence, what did he want to study? What were his interests?

He finally settled on health and safety. I proofread many assignments. However, five years later, I sat in a chair at his university graduation next to his wife, four children and his parents. I am not sure who was prouder.

Lifelong learning is an adventure that will take you on a path of personal discovery. If I can improve one soldier’s learning experience through my words, imagine what personalising learning and contextualising everyone’s experience could achieve.

Imagine meeting a learner’s expectations before they have even contemplated it. Just Imagine.