Since I’ve recently graduated from university this past June, I’ve been doing a lot of thinking regarding my learning — both in and out of the classroom setting. I’ve done a lot of writing about learning, ranging from best practices for learning different subjects, utilizing the interdisciplinary nature of knowledge to enjoy learning more, and much more. One thing related to learning that I have not adequately touched upon is my perspectives on “institutional” learning.
Simply put, there’s a large amount of undue complexity presented upon the initial introduction of many topics, sacrificing understanding in favor of rigor; this is something that academic pedagogy is especially guilty of. This learning methodology is the fastest way to destroy any interest or passion towards a topic, whereby you first by cover all definitions in painstaking detail, then proceed to some etymological or historical exposition about the topic, then if you’re lucky, finally end with some convoluted tangential examples (call this School A). In contrast, I find that there is tremendous value for students, where concepts and topics are introduced from a high-level and paired with a variety of analogies to aid in understanding (call this School B).
I understand that there is beauty in rigor and detail, but if it comes at the expense of scaring away a large number of potential learners from even touching or wrangling with the material, then it isn’t worth it. The majority of people will lose interest in a potentially interesting topic because the usefulness and philosophy of the ideas were obfuscated with jargon, the teaching is poor, or any combination of the above.
I fundamentally believe that learning should be a process of both external discovery and personal discovery — and as a direct result, even enjoyable! Let’s revisit the progression of learning as a child: you found something interesting that caught your glance, you started learning about it — be it through books, experiences, or some other method — and then refined that mental model with more rigor and nuance through your life. For example, I learned about the concept of oligopolies and buying power in the fourth grade by having the chance to have classroom dollars (I may or may not have convinced a few friends to pool all our money into a conglomerate, in an effort to control buying power at the year-end gift auction). It was a tangible and fun experience for me to learn about money and purchasing power, but most importantly, it was a simplified environment for me to explore and adopt a completely new mental framework.
Over the years, I’ve had the chance to continually refine my understanding of our economic system by learning more about macroeconomics, legislation, and many more tangential topics. However, had my very first exposure to the topic been a bombardment of definitions, related legislation, and the nuances of oligopoly (which was actually how I was formally introduced to these ideas in middle school), I can almost guarantee you that I wouldn’t have the interest in the financial markets and economic system that I have today. I would wager that my burgeoning interest would have been utterly crushed by the overwhelming flow of information and rigor.
I’ve spoken about analogies being an excellent way to approach learning, so here’s one to contextualize my learning philosophy. Imagine that you have a beautiful fresco of a stunning sunset over the hoodoos of Bryce Canyon National Park (if you’ve never seen or heard of them, you’re welcome). Learning in School A is the equivalent of scanning incremental sections of the painting until the entire painting is processed; this is very much like how your printer scans papers. In School B, you start out with a blurry image, but as you spend more time looking at the painting, the image becomes crisper and clearer. The important distinction in this scenario is that the students in School B have a good sense in the beginning of what they’re learning and the beauty of it, while students in School A have to toil for much longer (and many will likely quit) before they’re rewarded with the beauty and joy of the full picture.
Different approaches to learning (From BetterExplained)
Side note: an alternative way to think about the School B philosophy of learning is to think about Taylor approximations. Initially, you have a very poor fit to the function, but as you add more terms to the expansion, the Taylor expansion gets asymptotically closer to the target function.
This is why there’s so much success when you attempt to intuitively understand/grok concepts, learn by pretending to explain things to a child, and use the Feynman method for checking your learning. That is not to say that there is no use is theory and rigorous detail, but teaching this should not be at the expense of the interest of the students. Of course, when you use analogies and high-level explanations, you are bound to gloss over details or miss many of the more nuanced details. But that is fine, because learning is not a once-over, one-time pass, but instead should be a constant process of refining and seeking more understanding. When we approach learning as an iterative process motivated by interest and the quest to satiate our curiosity, then we have turned a possible-tedious chore into something — dare I say it? — truly fun and rewarding.