If you think about it, social learning really is the ultimate purpose behind humanity. It leads to marriage, to kids, and the correct ability of raising them right. It centers around life, the continuance of mankind. You’d think schools would promote social learning, and quite frankly, they do. What about the history of education, though? When genders were segregated–all-boy schools and all-girl schools–social learning was cut in half. Was that necessarily bad?
Sometimes. The thing is when you’re dealing with a methodology, efficiency is paramount. And ultimately no matter how old an individual gets, there’s always the opportunity to learn social qualities and dealing with others. Back when schools really didn’t have ‘dances’ or ‘functions’ or ‘clubs’ or any of that stuff, education was mostly about learning the basics, and not about how to live a life. Remember the times when you wished there was a manual for some of the most basic things?–such as raising a child?
That’s how important social learning is. It teaches you the basics in life, not just in basic academic education. Again, though, it didn’t mean that some of the old methods we’ve seen in education were necessarily bad. But we’re in an age where there are more people on the Earth, more opportunities to get to know everyone, to travel, to communicate, thanks to technology. Social learning is that much more important these days. Just look at Facebook, and you can understand why! Even in the job market, learning social skills is paramount. Back then, though, social skills weren’t necessarily an issue, as most professions were done on a solo setting. Nowadays, certain industries require a huge set of social skills to help deal with a variety of different people. Think factories, grocery stores, office complexes, law firms.
The key is to understand the times, the way the world has become. While methodology and academics has its purpose, social learning has now gained that much more importance.