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having seen andre stern pitch his latest bestseller on various podcasts, it came back to me that i wanted to write about learning vs. memorizing some time
a bunch of you that talked to me on irc or read this gemlog know that i have kids. seeing kids grow up makes you wonder where the difference between their approach to the world and that of the "grown-ups" is, because they are miles apart, and you can see that. i agree with andre stern about children having rituals, and they have 3 that almost all of them share.
when you sum those up into learning things, it means that learning _happens_ to them. it just does. automatically. without motivation to learn, without justification, without reasoning.
grown-ups think that learning is something you can force or inspire
once kids enter kindergarten, latest in school, there is a set of things that need to be learned, that are deemed very important later on. and so grown-ups try to streamline this into a schedule, a plan, and slap it around the heads of the kids, force them to squeeze through it, because otherwise some doomsday future will apparently happen to them. however before kids are placed into this plan, it's not like they are completely unable to acquire knowledge on about how the world works. on their own, without anyone making a plan, they learn how to walk, climb, jump, talk, build, construct, draw, paint, dig, mold, and the list goes on. yet when they turn 6 or 7 they are deemed "stupid" and put into a system that forces them to align to a plan made by people who cannot fathom anymore how kids actually catch up the gap between them and the modern complex world.
learning in a grown-up definition equals memorizing
in school kids are taught to memorize poems, repeatedly write the same letters as a group and many other things. at first this is closer to the second ritual i laid out above, repeat and eventually it'll sink in, but they _have_ to do this on their own, copying from other kids is frowned upon. later on this repeating step is moved into the homework section of things, again you cannot copy from others, you need to copy from memory so at least something will stick. so what basically happens is, someone else says "this is what you need to learn next" and then you're supposed to repeat it until it sinks in by force. the first and third ritual have no room anymore, because random try and error takes too much time, and would be an individual approach, and copying something from someone else would mean that someone actually does it out there in the real world. and if all 3 rituals would be honoured, then the whole forcing aspect wouldn't be required, obviously.
adult life separates the kid-like ritualized acquisition of <skills|knowledge|...> and the forced acquisition of the same
everything related to work, the economy, the teaching institutions favours heavily the memorization approach, and this stays until you're old and die. the workplace sends you into certifications, schools and conferences settings to be presented a random topic, you'll have to find interesting because the workplace demands it and then you force yourself to memorize it. remember when i wrote, that learning _happens_ to you? this indicates a choice in the matter. and the only place you actually have a choice is in this thing called "free time", where you can get interested in anything. i presume we all know it at least from consumerism, when the curiosity to know the ending of a good book or movie or tv show is so strong it wants you to stick with it until you know. unfortunately free time comes in too late for most people in life to still remember how to be interested in things and just repeat them until they are satisfied. kids have access to things that behave mostly static, follow the same rules over and over, and even sports follows that category. grown-ups rarely pick similar things to be interested in, but they do, in gardening, decoration, cooking and various types of sports.
can you fix this?
you can explain this to your kids and support them when they want to pick up a skill on their own. most kids want to write and sing and draw on their own, when they are ready for it, but then they will vaccuum in all the knowledge and requirements they need for it. a lot faster than what any school could teach. until they are satisfied with the current state of things and they'll move on to new skills, and eventually return to refine them.
as an adult you're pretty much screwed because the economy and education doesn't support this. certain individuals can live it, they are the ones that drive companies, but for the most of us, we're stuck in a system that doesn't support being an individual. there are of course reasons for this, you're not replacable if you're unique, and that's bad for a company. maybe ask idiomdrottning about more reasons. they know more than me. what it does definitely is make us susceptible for consumerism, because of the lost intrinsic motivation to be curious and copy things others do.