“I have never let my schooling interfere with my education.”
~ Mark Twain

Parents and teachers often have the greatest of intentions and genuine concern for their children’s well-being and education, but it is all too common for educators to take the wrong approach to education, which impedes learning rather than facilitate it.

Many of us carry psychological scars as a result of our schooling, which continue to our adulthood, without us ever consciously addressing these scars. We have come to accept that learning is difficult and is taxing on the brain, without realizing why that is.

One of the worst mistakes educators commit is obsessing over the right answer, rather than encourage independent thinking.

This isn’t to say that any answer is equally valid to any other, or that we all have unique answers based on unique perspectives. In many issues, there is a right answer and a heap of wrong answers.

But that’s not the point.

The point is, as human beings, we need to know how to use our brains for thinking, in the same way we learn how to use our legs for walking.

Being told to memorize answers, without knowing why they’re true, bypasses the thinking process, and sees the human brain as a storage house, with no cognitive apparatus that acts on and analyzes the information it stores.

But the human brain is a marvelous computer, not a hard drive.

It is crucial that we feel comfortable thinking for ourselves, without being afraid of making mistakes every now and then. And the more we refine our thinking, the fewer mistakes we are likely to make. In the same way an infant struggles to walk at first, and constantly falters during his initial attempts, then walks more and more steadily as he learns how to use his legs and body, we need to go through a similar learning process when it comes to the use of our rational faculty.

This learning should have come at an early age, but well-meaning educators were too concerned with filling our brains with information rather than encourage us to develop our own thinking.

It is impossible to develop understanding without knowing how to think. We can memorize information without too much mental processing. But understanding involves connecting bits of information together, and looking for consistency between them to form a bigger picture from all the smaller pieces. That involves thinking.

Understanding is an essential component to healthy living. It helps us make sense of daily events and allows us to reach conclusions based on the knowledge we already possess, thereby expanding our knowledge through mental effort. Trying to hold disconnected factoids about the world in our brains can become too taxing for our memory recall. Understanding helps us make our way from one piece of information to another, based on the connections that link them together and the context they share.

I usually don’t ask my students for the right answer. I ask them for an answer (any answer that conveys their understanding), and base my explanation on what they already understand (or what they have misunderstood). That way I respect their own thinking, but offer them guidance on where they went wrong and how they can reach the right answer. Some students feel too embarrassed to reveal their ignorance, or to give a wrong answer (a sign of bad education), and opt for a shrug of the shoulders or a blank: “I don’t know.”

Learning involves a great deal of mistakes, and there’s no reason to feel guilty or bad about making intellectual errors. We don’t learn by hiding our ignorance. We learn by revealing what we know, and being open to opportunities to improve our thinking. We should also encourage our children to think for themselves, rather than snap at them whenever they say something nonsensical.

For example, if your child came to you and said: “Pigs can fly!”

It’s not wise to reply: “You idiot! What made you think they can fly? Pigs can’t fly!”

A better approach would be to encourage your child to think for himself by asking thought-provoking questions and offering facts for him to consider: “How can pigs fly? They don’t have wings.”

If your child says: “They can use a rocket!” then his initial statement was right, and there’s no need to undermine his creative thinking process. That’s a mark of intelligence, not wild imagination, because he considered an alternative way to flying that doesn’t involve wings!

It’s this kind of thinking that should be encouraged by educators, and exercised by children and adults alike.

Photo credit: jurvetson

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We are often told that with the right attitude we can achieve anything. If we believe in ourselves, the sky is the limit.

But while attitude and mindset play a crucial role in achieving our life goals, most goals are just not a walk in the park. They require some effort to climb uphill and cross a learning curve.

To simply ignore the fact that you don’t already know everything there is to know to reach your goal means you’ll be running around in circles wondering why you’re not making any progress. And the reason why you’re not making any progress is that you’re refusing to go in the direction where the learning curve is. You can’t see your goal and can’t find a way to get there because you have to go past the learning curve to get to your goal.

No climbing, no success.

Knowledge & Skills

When I talk about learning curves, I’m usually referring to two kinds of curves:

1) Learning something new

2) Developing a new skill

You can memorize what a keyboard looks like. That’s knowledge. But fast typing is a skill. You need both knowledge and skill to reach your goals. Both require practice. The more you learn, the easier it is to learn more.

What knowledge you need to acquire and what skills you need to develop depends on the goal you’re pursuing.

But what matters is acknowledging that you need to pass the learning curve to get to your goal.

Admit That You Don’t Know

One of the main reasons why we struggle to reach our goals is the refusal to admit when we don’t know. We find it offensive to say that we’re ignorant. It’s demeaning. It expresses a lack, when we should be singing our own praises and repeating positive mantras.

But if you’re unwilling to admit that you don’t know, you’ll never have the courage to face your learning curves. You will struggle to make sense of an incline when you’re expecting a flat surface. But rather than admit that the ground isn’t flat, you try to motivate yourself to believe that it is!

That’s not dedication. That’s delusion.

Learning curves can only be passed by learning something new. Admitting that you don’t know isn’t an insult. It’s a fact, and one you should embrace wholeheartedly.

Let people know you’re struggling to understand a concept. Ask for support. Seek out recommendations. Read up on the basics of a new subject, without thinking that it’s below you to admit that you’re a novice. You are, so act the part. You can only climb a learning curve if you know where you stand along the curve.

And remember:

Before you know, you don’t.

Before you can, you can’t.

At least that’s what Nature seems to tell us.

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Rationality is a celebrity, adored and respected by many. Known for his wise counsel, sound arguments and fair judgment.

But not everyone knows the dark family secret of Rationality, which many dare not think about, let alone mention.

Since I know the secret, I find it necessary to reveal it to my readers, so that they are no longer fooled by this ongoing deception.

Rationality has a twin brother. An evil twin brother.

What’s more, the evil one often pretends to be his good-natured brother, and takes advantage of his brother’s prestige for his own wicked plans.

The evil twin is known as Rationalization.

The twins are identical. They look the same and sound the same.

They are both logical. They are both consistent in their arguments.

But while Rationality upholds truth, Rationalization finds consistency in falsehood.

Rationality ensures that every statement is factual, whereas Rationalization often relies on assumptions.

Rationality respects evidence, but Rationalization values opinions.

Rationality uses reality as his guide, but Rationalization selects from reality that which serves his purposes.

Rationality judges ideas according to Reality, whereas Rationalization judges Reality according to his beliefs.

The twins sound the same, but their arguments are worlds apart.

Rationality equips Man with the right understanding of Reality to ensure his happiness, but Rationalization makes Man’s ignorance sound reasonable. What made this possible is the trust Rationality has built for himself, and the many accomplishments he helped Man achieve.

When Rationalization spoke, people thought it was Rationality, the brother they were fond of. Not knowing that Rationality had an evil twin that was sabotaging the good he worked tirelessly to establish.

And now, when Rationalization is to be condemned for the false arguments he has presented, his brother is taking the blame and losing his credibility and hard-earned reputation.

Which is why it’s important to know that the evil twin exists, and that we must not judge Rationality for the crimes Rationalization has committed in his name.

What conforms to reality is the work of Rationality. What doesn’t is the work of Rationalization.

What’s based on facts – and only facts – and never uses fallacious reasoning is the argument of Rationality. What mixes fact and fiction and fallacy is the concoction of Rationalization.

Whenever you use any logical argument, ask yourself:

Whose work is it: Rationality or Rationalization?

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Our capacity to learn is not determined by our intelligence as much as it is determined but our attitude towards learning and our impression of how much we know.

Oddly enough, the more we think we know, the lower our capacity to learn is.

Why is that the case?

Because when we focus our attention on what we know, we do not seek to acquire new information. This can be especially deadly when we begin assuming that we already know everything about the world and about the topics we commonly read about. We can even assume that we already know what others believe and think that we fully understand their points of view.

We then stop listening, and content ourselves with what we already know, even though we may have misunderstood the beliefs of others, or we can learn more from them.

Advances in science have only been possible by the willingness of scientists to explore further and to reconsider their current understanding of the world.

Learning and The Glass Analogy

When it comes to learning, it is better to see the glass as being half empty than being half full. That way, we will seek to fill the empty half rather than be pleased and contented with the full half.

If we want to learn more, we should never be contented with what we already know.

Sadly, it’s very easy to imagine the cup as being full while overlooking the fact that it is half empty. This is when what we know contributes to our ignorance more than our own ignorance!

How Big Is the Container?

If we truly want to increase our capacity to learn, we must imagine our learning capacity to be a massive container that can be filled with a great deal of knowledge that we have yet to acquire. This will lead us to observe more, become better listeners, ask more questions and be open to take in more information than we would if we think that we already know everything.

“The doorstep to the temple of wisdom is a knowledge of our own ignorance.”
C. H. (Charles Haddon) Spurgeon

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Related posts:

1. Life Goals and Learning Curves
2. Why It’s Wrong To Obsess Over The Right Answer

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