Old Dogs Can Learn New Tricks

The old adage claims you can't teach old dogs new tricks, suggesting adults become rigid in their ways, resistant to change, and incapable of meaningful growth. I've felt this rigidity in myself—the resistance to change, the need to be right in every conversation. Yet my experiences as a father, husband, and business owner have revealed that this adage, like others before it ("there is nothing new under the sun"), often contradicts our lived reality and modern theories of adult learning.

Adults continuously expand upon what they already know. As a facilitator, I understood my job involved creating conditions that enable learning. However, during a class on adult education, I discovered these conditions have a name: "holding environments." These environments provide the optimal balance of support and challenge—support by meeting learners where they are, accepting their current understanding, and challenge by gently pressing against those boundaries to foster new perspectives. My age and cognitive development didn't prevent this old dog from learning something new.

The capacity for adult learning manifests daily in multiple dimensions. Adults routinely master new practical skills: driving, home repairs, cooking, changing diapers, or reading maps. We also regularly update our understanding of familiar concepts. For instance, I knew that democratic elections typically crown the candidate with the most votes. Yet I later learned that in certain constitutional democracies, including the United States, the popular vote doesn't necessarily determine the presidential victor. In Nigeria in 1975, presidential candidates needed a plurality of votes in two-thirds of nineteen states. Meanwhile, the United States has seen five presidents win office while losing the popular vote through the Electoral College system: John Quincy Adams (1824), Rutherford B. Hayes (1876), Benjamin Harrison (1888), George W. Bush (2000), and Donald Trump (2016). Clearly, old dogs not only can learn—we do so more frequently than we acknowledge.

Beyond acquiring facts and skills, researchers have identified another profound dimension of adult learning: the transformation of how we learn, not just what we learn. This meta-learning involves reconceiving our experiences in ways that open new perspectives. As educational theorist Jack Mezirow described it, transformation is "the process by which we transform our taken-for-granted frames of reference to make them more inclusive, discriminating, open, emotionally capable of change, and reflective so that they may generate beliefs and opinions that will prove more true or justified to guide actions."

I've experienced this transformation firsthand. The bitterness I harbored from childhood experiences crumbled when I encountered what Philip Yancey calls the "amazing and scandalous grace" of God—grace that accepts even someone like me as a follower of Christ. This realization prompted a profound question: If I can be forgiven, who am I to harbor bitterness and unforgiveness? This shift in perspective fundamentally altered how I relate to my past.

Old dogs can indeed learn new tricks. More importantly, we can transform how we see the world and ourselves within it. The capacity for growth doesn't diminish with age—it deepens, allowing for more nuanced understanding and profound change. Perhaps the true wisdom of aging isn't becoming more fixed in our ways, but rather gaining the humility to recognize how much we still have to learn.