While certain ideas in Teaching as a Subversive Activity are outmoded, others remain fresh and relevant today. There’s intuitive appeal in the notion that good learners are those who have confidence in their learning ability; who take pleasure in problem-solving; who are flexible, deliberative, careful, persistent, and questioning; who prefer to rely on their own judgement; and who recognise their limitations. Postman and Weingartner also emphasise that good learners can get by without absolute, definitive solutions to every problem, preferring to admit ignorance rather than fabricate “the various forms of semantic nonsense that pass for answers to questions that do not as yet have any solution.”
Most appealing of all, perhaps, is their idea that good learners are not afraid of being wrong: “they can change their minds. Changing the character of their minds is what good learners are most interested in doing.”