The Slow Path of Learning

The Slow Path of Learning

The other night, at parents’ evening, I heard another father speak in frustration. His son, the same boy my daughter sometimes compares herself to, spends all day glued to screens, addicted to mobile games, addicted to blue light. And yet, in the strange logic of school, he often looks like he is doing better than her. I heard the father say to some other parent that evening he doesn’t know what to do anymore. His son has marks on paper, but no peace at home. This is the irony of our times: the school system rewards the sprint, but ignores the marathon.

My daugher asked me why that is, and I told her that school and real learning are not the same. 

School rewards quick memory, obedience, the ability to repeat. That is the “Cyclops” brain: large, fast, overwhelming. But real learning is slower, deeper. It’s Odysseus, not Polyphemus. It’s the mind that connects myths, history, and philosophy, that grows roots rather than chasing the next quick win. The Cyclops looks stronger in the short term, but in the long term it is Odysseus who escapes the cave.

Even Lovecraft, the favorite author of my daughter,  saw this. His monsters are massive, incomprehensible, like a storm of brute force. But the true tension in his stories is whether the human mind can face the abyss without collapsing, whether it can make sense of the chaos. That is what my daughter is already practicing: to look at stories, to connect, to understand. It is not the fast food of knowledge; it is the slow meal that nourishes for life.

The other father envies without knowing it. He has the “better” student on paper, but he is already losing his son to the machine. Meanwhile my daughter walks her own path, free of that addiction, guided by curiosity rather than compulsion. She may sometimes feel behind in the school race, but she is not trapped in the wheel. And that is already the proof of the deeper path.

Roots take longer to grow than weeds. But when the storm comes, it is the tree with roots that will stand.