I was driving back home from work with few things bothering me one day and did not realize that I have reached home.
This is before the days of GPS.
Driving down this route over many years, I knew all the road bumps, traffic signals and turns and traffic conditions. I can bet this might have happened to almost all of us at some point or the other. At the start of the drive, the conscious mind had told me that I may need to deviate from the regular route I take to get home to do some errands. But half way down the drive, the conscious mind had gotten distracted by other things happening along the route to forget about the errands, but I had reached home without even thinking about it.
This led me to question how that learning had happened. You may have your explanations, but I will attempt to share it from a foundational learning perspective.
Without the driving skills that I had learnt, I would not be driving. Without a teacher who showed me how to drive, I would not be driving. That learning was instructor led.
Repeated driving down the same route, I can make an argument that some sort of transfer process must have taken place for subconscious mind to be in charge even when a part of conscious mind was occupied with some other thoughts. Imagine this. The location sense that my brain was constantly being updating by means of receptions of the change in locations through my eyes, and in turn was controlling my arms to turn the wheel and my legs to shift between braking and accelerating to deal with traffic and road conditions. Even though I have been instructed to deviate from my route to do other errands, my conscience had registered it, but my subconscious had not to make a subconscious effort to deviate.
I took this example to analyze the recent advances made in the field of AI, robotics and machine learning. We know that driverless vehicles are already here with us to do exactly what I did. Let me now bring this difference between me and the driverless car.
I learnt only one skill, that is driving. Comparing all my learning that happened afterwards with the learning that has to happen to create this driverless car, I was astounded by the means with which I had augmented that learning by my own learning. I can safely assume that this augmented learning does not happen the same way for everyone.
I believe, that learning happened in many dimensions for me. I can list them as 1) trusting the effort needed by me and the car to accelerate or brake 2) being aware of all the moving and stationary things around me to monovre 3) Improvise on choosing lanes to increase my driving comfort levels 4) transfer continuously all that information to my subconscious to let it take over the way it did.
Can you think of this activity of learning for those who are less privileged than us in sight, sound, mobility or learning capabilities to hypothesize their learning? If you have already seen such learning happening, will you be able to share that learning please?