Author John Green and his Passion for Learning

Many of you know John Green as the author of "The Fault in Our Stars." Some of you may be familiar with some of his other work. According to Wikipedia John Green is also a vlogger, director, producer, cinematographer, editor, stunt performer and actor. Green appears to have multiple passions.

In 2014, Green was listed by Time magazine as "One of the Most Influential People in the World."

What stood out for me in this Ted Talk that Green gave is his passion for learning.

This Ted Talk is called "John Green on Paper Towns and Why Learning is Awesome." Comparing learning to map making, Green shows his passion for learning, and explains that through learning, we are able to go to many places.

Green begins his Ted Talk by discussing why cartographers create paper towns, otherwise known as copyright traps. He explains that map makers insert fake places on their maps. If someone was to copy a map with a fake place, then the original map maker would know that copyright laws were broken.

This all sounds great in theory, and I reasonably sure it is effective, with the exception of Agloe, New York, which started out as a paper town. The original map was released in 1937. Decades later a map maker released a map with Agloe, New York on it, setting of alarm bells....theft, theft, theft!

Green explains that when the original map maker contacted the new map maker, the new map maker argued that Agloe is real, and indeed it its. The paper town became a town because people kept going to the place, where the town would be located on the original map. In other words, people were looking for Agloe. Because people kept coming to this spot, Green tells us, "Someone built a place called Agloe, New York."

"And this is completely an irresistible metaphor to a novelist, because we would all like to believe that the stuff we write down on paper can change the actual world in which we're living, which is why my third book is called "Paper Towns," Green asserts.

Green then goes on to say what interests him more than the medium in which this happened is the phenomenon itself. He tells us that what he finds more interesting is how the way we map the world changes the world. He explains that if North were down and South were up, we would perceive the world differently.

"The world is changed by our maps of the world," Green enthusiastically tells listeners.

Green then links this to our own lives, saying that, "I believe that what we map, changes the life that we lead."

Green then discusses his own learning, and how he was a really terrible student when he was a kid.
( In my experience, some of the smartest and most creative people do not start out getting along with school.)

He explains that he saw education as a series of arbitrary hurdles that he had to jump over to reach adulthood.

However, everything changed for Green when he was in tenth grade and began attending a small boarding school outside of Indian Springs.

"And all at once I became a learner," says Green. He then explains that he became a learner because he found himself amongst a community of learners. Community and learning is very important for Green. For John Green, community is the magic bullet, changing everything as mentioned earlier.

Green then talks about some of the things that he learned because learning was cool. He says that he learned that some infinite sets were bigger than other infinite sets, and this was exciting. I never would have thought of this if I had not read Green's "The Fault in Our Stars."

“There are infinite numbers between 0 and 1. There's .1 and .12 and .112 and an infinite collection of others. Of course, there is a bigger infinite set of numbers between 0 and 2, or between 0 and a million. Some infinities are bigger than other infinities. A writer we used to like taught us that. There are days, many of them, when I resent the size of my unbounded set. I want more numbers than I'm likely to get, and God, I want more numbers for Augustus Waters than he got. But, Gus, my love, I cannot tell you how thankful I am for our little infinity. I wouldn't trade it for the world. You gave me a forever within the numbered days, and I'm grateful.”― John Green, The Fault in Our Stars

Many of you will recall that Hazel wrote this for Augustus before he died in "The Fault in Our Stars." She also read it to him, because Augustus wanted to know what people would say about him before he died.

Back to the Ted Talk...Green tells us he learned what iambic pentameter is and why it sounds so good to the human ear.

Hopefully, we all learn things that we feel enthusiastic about. As an educator, I am supposed to be helping all my students become life long learners. I know I am a life long learner, and that I love to learn. You can never really be lonely if you are involved in learning. Somewhere I read that "books are quiet friends," and so too can be the Internet.

Again, back to the Ted Talk...Green lists a few more things that he learned, and then he drives home the point: "All of these things enriched my life on a literally daily basis."

Green presents his learning like a map that a cartographer was creating.

He says that "a lot of the learning he did in high school was not about what happened inside the classroom. It was about what  happened outside of the classroom."

Green describes how through learning "the map of his life got better." 

For this reason, I believe that we all need to take the learning opportunities that come into our lives and embrace them. When we are in sync with our need to know, we create more places on our personal maps, which in turn could lead to more opportunities.

Green speaks about imagining learning as cartography as opposed to imagining as a series of arbitrary hurdles that he needed to jump over. He says that when we see a bit of coastline, we want to see more.

He describes the different learning communities that he had been part of, and then what it was like not to be a part of of a learning community.

After writing his first book, Green quit his job. And shortly after this, Green was miserable. Can you guess why? Yes, he is no longer part of a learning community. Green says that he read many books, but he felt like he was creating his own arbitrary hurdles.

Learning after all is a social act. When we learn something, it is natural to want to talk about it with others. This may be more true for some people than others. I imagine that extroverts particularly like to share ideas.

Things change again for Green in 2006, when he finds  Ze Frank on the internet. When Green discovered Frank, he was running a show called "The Show with Ze Frank."

Green says, "Ze is not just a great public intellectual, he is also a brilliant community builder, and the community that built up around these videos (Ze's online shows) was in many ways a community of learners."

Through Ze Frank, Green found himself taking place in "silly"ideas like turning the Earth into a sandwich. Green points out while these are "silly" ideas they are also "learny" ideas.

Green says that online we can find communities of learners all over the place, pointing out that one can follow the calculus tag on Tumblr. He further shows us that there are places on Reddit like "Ask a Historian" or "Ask Science."

To Green, "the most interesting communities of learners" are appearing on Youtube. Green admits to being biased.

Recall that Green is a vloger. This is where I first found Green, and the reason is that he has high quality thought provoking videos on works of literature. I highly recommend these videos. Green also makes videos on topics related to Social Studies.  These videos appear on his show called "Crash Course" and at this point in time, there are 606 videos.

Green believes "that in many ways the YouTube page resembles a classroom," pointing to Minute Physics as an example, and his own video on "Crash Course" about WWI as another example.

These videos have half a million views on YouTube. Green describes the subscribers to youtube channels as communities of learners.

Green argues that YouTube is like an old fashioned classroom because the instructor makes the video, and the viewers and subscribers can use the comment section to discuss what they are learning. We know that there will be trolls. However, on channels like "Crash Course" people actually talk about the video content. In these channel comments, people ask challenging questions about the subject matter, and others answer these challenging questions.

Green concludes his Ted Talk stating, "I really believe that these spaces, these communities, have become for a new generation of learners the kind of communities, the kind of cartographic communities that I had when I was in high school, and then again in college. And as an adult, re-finding these communities has re-introduced me to a community of learners, and has encouraged me to be a learner even in my adulthood, so that I know longer feel that learning is something reserved for the young."

Firstly, it is apparent that John Green's passion for learning has taken him to many places, and he will continue to travel.

Secondly, as an adult, I feel good when I am learning new things, and thrive on learning. I have subscribed to several channels, and I am a student of  YouTube school.

Thirdly, you can learn to do just about anything on YouTube...don't forget this. My next search will be on caring for Bamboo, because I bought 4 bamboo plants over the summer. (I know this is not "academic" as Green's learning, but it matters to me.)

By the way, I do not ask questions in the comment section, but I may thank the presenter for making the YouTube video, and give it a like. I do not think that I need community to the extent that Green does.

We all need to take stock of how we feel about learning, what we want to learn about, and what role community plays in our learning from time to time. We need to remember that we will be learning all our lives so the relationship that we have with learning is of great importance.