Gods of the Mind

The great Buzzword today is "Information."

We talk about the information explosion, and librarians call themselves information managers. We laud information technology, and we pride ourselves on being able to deliver information anywhere, anytime. But schools and school libraries are not really in the information business. They're in the learning business. It's important to distinguish between the two, and to promote libraries as instruments of learning, rather than as centers of information.

Nearly 20 years ago, Mortimer Adler, the late education reformer and philosopher, devised a system that is useful in understanding the learning process. Adler described what he called the "four gods of the mind." In ascending order of importance, they are Information, Knowledge, Understanding, and Wisdom. According to Adler, students must access information in order to extract knowledge. But to assess the value of that information and place it in a meaningful context, learners need to possess some prior knowledge and a measure of understanding. In other words, what students already understand determines the knowledge that they seek and, at the same time, provides a foundation for future wisdom.

It should come as no surprise that information is the most plentiful of the four "commodities," and the one most suited to computerization and technological transmission. But as we have seen, information is useless without understanding. How can we tell when students have comprehended something? Understanding is achieved when they instantly draw upon and apply what they have in their heads. Understanding is achieved when students are able to distinguish between the relevant and the useless, to detect connections and discern patterns, and to anticipate likely consequences.

Sir Isaac Newton's work is illustrative. His knowledge of the physical world in the 17th century led him to understand what he observed. That, in turn, encouraged the great scientist and mathematician to formulate all sorts of questions and to ascertain which of those questions were answerable. Then—and perhaps most important—he was able to determine which of those questions was worth answering. That, for lack of a better term, is wisdom.

Even in Newton's time, more information was regularly generated than any single person could absorb. The test now, as then, is to distinguish informational value. Librarians and teachers provide the arena for students to make those tests. By helping students evaluate the resources they find and assess their relative value, we build their capacity to discern. Then, by helping them to discern not only the implications of what they know, but how each piece may be interrelated, we enable them to construct the context that produces learning. It's that process that invokes Adler's higher- level gods of the mind. It's that process that draws knowledge from information and allows knowledge to evolve into understanding.

Our duty as educators is to recognize that information retrieval skills do not equate to learning and to celebrate the understood more than the found. And not to celebrate it silently. Leonard Sayles, a wonderful organizational researcher, long ago pointed out that quiet competence bespeaks routine work, and doing routine work leads to powerlessness. Unless librarians stand out in some way, unless people are made to understand that they are engaged in the school's central mission, it is very difficult to be perceived as vital and integral. How ironic it would be if libraries continued to suffer second-class educational status because, for all the information they can provide, people didn't come away with knowledge and understanding of what they're really about.