The Secret to Learning (Or Teaching) Anything
Eleven years ago I got off a plane in a
country where I did not speak the language: South Korea. I moved
there to teach English as a second language for two years (it was so much fun, I would really recommend it if you ever get the chance). Now, I am
not exaggerating when I say that I did not speak a single word.
Seriously. I was young and I figured that I would pick it up along
the way. (How? Somehow. I didn't really think it through).
Needless to say, it was nowhere as easy to pick it up as I had
imagined.
I did slowly gain some competence in
the language, at least enough to order food at a restaurant or ask
someone for directions. The key was to isolate the essential
building blocks of the skill (in this case phonemes and letters,
Korean uses a phonetic alphabet much like English). Once you
understand whatever that basic element is, you can begin to
understand the abstractions at the next level (such as syllables,
words, sentences, and eventually higher level concepts).
In language, that essential element is
the smallest unit of sound: the phoneme. Once your child understands
the sounds of language, they can begin to understand words or connect
those sounds to the symbols s that we call letters.
As a shorthand, we can say that
knowledge is hierarchical. All knowledge, is an abstraction based on
simpler abstractions, or sensory data at the very base (or perhaps
some form of instinct in some cases, I'm not sure about that though,
but I'm willing to entertain the idea). The idea that you learn
today is built upon that which you learned yesterday, and ultimately
it is based upon things that you may have seen or heard when you were
a child.
Think about learning math. Take a
subtraction problem, for example. Subtraction is a higher level
concept which is based upon many different “smaller” ideas such
as: quantity (being able to measure how many there are of something),
representational numbers (the idea that a symbol, spoken or written,
can stand in the place of a real world quantity), the idea that a
quantity cannot be place both in one group and another (so that when
you move an object to a new group, it ceases, to be a member of the
original group), etc.
So, then, what is the secret to
learning (or teaching) anything? You must look at the educational
goal in question and ask yourself, “What is the most simple element
of this skill?” Build from the bottom. That doesn't mean that learning it will be easy (sorry, quick fixes do not exist), but it will be doable.
With children, often this means giving
them the opportunity to experience the things that may help them form
those abstractions. Do you want your baby to be able to be a great
reader or writer? Talk to them, a lot. Having that sensory
experience with spoken language gives them the building blocks to
learn to write later.
Want to teach your child to be a great
scientist (or at least a curious person who enjoys science)? Let
them get dirty and perform their “experiments” even when they are
not the most convenient thing (My three year old daughter is
currently trying to turn water white by leaving a piece of paper in a
cup at the bathroom sink).
We often try to teach something without
thinking about how that new piece of information builds on what comes
before it. Often, if you have all of the prerequisite knowledge, you
can independently invent the conclusions for yourself.
I hope this has given you some food for
thought. I have recently been thinking about this a lot as I am
trying to write a math curriculum for preschool which mimics the
phonics/phonemic awareness approach that works so well in language
arts. If you have any questions or comments, feel free to leave them
in the comments down below.
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