lessons and learnings

There is a subtle distinction to be made between a lesson and a learning, one which was clearly recognised by educators in the 20th century who placed great store on the learning process and the learning set which students needed to have to acquire lasting knowledge.

 A lesson is a discrete parcel of knowledge taught to a student by a teacher. The student is the passive recipient, being required only to comprehend and regurgitate the information obtained in this way.  A learning, on the other hand, is knowledge acquired through experience.

 It is true that there is an overlap with lesson in that lesson was used figuratively for a real-life experience from which a person could obtain some wisdom.  The image is still the classroom but in this case the teacher is life itself. This kind of lesson turns up in the expression let that be a lesson to you.   

 So it is to the educators of the 1900s that we owe the notion of a learning process delivering learnings to the student.  This transferred to business jargon in the early years of the 21st century, and rapidly became a cliché of business, politics, and popular psychobabble.

 While I am sick to death of learnings, it is the overuse of the term that I object to. The original distinction between a lesson and a learning is, I think, perfectly valid.