There has been a push in recent years in the world of education to make learning more personalized. What educators and administrators usually mean by this is that each individual student should be able to learn in the way that best suits his or her learning style, personality and interests. That way, the learning that is taking place is styled to the person at hand. The implication, which is sometimes explicitly stated, is that other forms of learning are impersonal; i.e., a factory model of education where content is delivered the same way to all students does not take into account the person-ality of each individual. Things are made in factories all according to the same model by the same processes. Individuals, on the other hand, are all different and, so the argument goes, require different methods of instruction.

As a teacher, I have come to find that there are merits to this point of view, and there are some who might take it to an extreme. But I do not want to discuss the pros and cons of any particular method or methods of education here. Instead, I want to reflect on the meaning of the phrase “personalized learning” and the redundancy it contains.

On the first day of school I show my students a short video of Einstein the Parrot saying words, making noises and dancing. We are all amazed at the intelligence of the bird. However, the point is not just to marvel at the abilities of this bird, awesome as they are. I ask my students if they noticed what the trainer was doing. In one hand she was holding the microphone, but the other was feeding him treats. Even though we look at the parrot and would all agree that he was very smart, the bird can only be said to have been well trained. Real learning is not something a bird can do. Only a person can learn.

Since only a person can learn, it follows that a person is necessarily involved in learning. If learning is happening, it is a person who is learning. Thus, all learning is personalized. What is it about a person that makes it possible only for a person to learn? A person has an intellect.

A bird (or a dog or a cat or any other nonhuman animal) can be trained to perform certain tasks when presented with certain stimuli, but that is not the same thing as learning. A human being has the ability to think abstractly and communicate in language to other people. Human persons can form concepts and work with them in an intellectual kind of way. When Einstein the Parrot hears someone say “I’m worried,” he responds, “What’s the matter,” not because he understands the meanings of the words, processes them, sympathizes, and then wants to find out more information so that he can be helpful. He simply hears a sound and makes another sound, a pattern instilled and reinforced by imitation and treats.

There is a similar difference between genuine persons and computers. We talk of computer learning, but there is no such thing, strictly speaking. Learning involves understanding, and a computer does not understand the information programmed into it any more than the book understands the story on its pages or the beach understands the castle built in its sand.

Another way that all learning is personal is in the fact that learning must take place in a community. Even those who learn by reading books are still relying on communion with the authors for their learning. We learn together; persons do not learn in isolation.

As such, learning should be oriented toward the full development of the person as a person. The purpose of education is to help the student reach his maximum potential. Far from being a memorization of facts, education should draw us out of ourselves into community of other things and other persons. In this regard, there are important ways in which education will be the same for everyone since education has this common goal for all persons: to know truth, goodness and beauty and to be able to love completely.

Oh, the glory of being a person! This is only one aspect of what it means to be a person, and when we reflect on it we are caused to wonder at it. The fact that we have the abilities to commune and to know. Because we can learn, we can know one another — the highest objects presented to our senses apart from the Blessed Sacrament.

When we reflect on the phrase personalized learning and think about what it means to be a person, we discover the redundancy in the phrase but also find that we are led to meditate on the dignity and beauty of being a person. It is as persons, with intellect and will, that we are created in the image of God. Even educational fads point us upward when we dig deep enough. St. John Paul II wrote, “Creation is a gift, because man appears in it, who, as an ‘image of God,’ is able to understand the very meaning of the gift in the call from nothing to existence. He is also able to respond to the Creator with the language of this understanding.”