What Can’t You Teach? 37

What Can’t You Teach? 37 The bottom line here is one of initial belief systems and fundamental personality characteristics, coupled with the notion of truly held goals. You cannot teach someone something that: e does not help them achieve some goal they actually hold e is not in line with their fundamental personality characteristics e goes against their subconscious beliefs You can try, but you won’t succeed. So the question of what you can’t teach, which is very important when we think about teaching and learning, comes down to a ques- tion of whom the child has become because of what she learned prior to the age of 7, and what she was anyway when she exited the womb. Those two things are powerful enough even if you don’t add in trying to teach something that in no way relates to any goal the child has. This is even more true for adults, of course. We can try to teach adults things that are at odds with who they are as people, but good luck with that. Traits may come with the child, or they may have been learned by the child prior to the age of 7, but it really makes no difference when we are discussing teaching. Personality cannot be changed. Core beliefs are very hard to change. Interests are hard to change, although new ones can be found. Clinical psychologists try to make small changes in these aspects of people but they have a very difficult time doing it. But my point here is to address an issue in education and training that is not well understood. Simply stated it is this: Jt is not possible to teach or train students to do things that are not in line with who they are as people. This matters because much of what we try to teach in school and train for in companies is an attempt to alter behavior. I have been building what have come to be called e-learning sys- tems for about 25 years. Over the years, I have realized that there is nothing new under the sun in the subject matter that e-learning sys- tems are asked to address. One of my least favorite subjects, one that comes up frequently, is integrity and compliance. I have been asked to work on this subject quite often. Usually what is being asked is im- possible. Most e-learning companies simply do what they are asked to do by the client without pointing out—if they even know—that what they are being asked to teach can’t be taught. Companies that need HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_023783