Code of Conduct

Something I have grown more and more interested in as I have gotten older is learning theory. I'm curious about how people learn new ideas and skills. What makes the difference between learning something well enough to complete a job or a task and mastering it to a level that one can dream up ways to use that information that are entirely new and creative? One of my favorite quotes from Marvin Minsky goes something like, “If you only understand something one way, you don’t understand it at all.” To me, that quote gets to the central principle of what it is to learn in a truly human way. It isn't enough to simply memorize a piece of information. Real learning comes when you find ways to connect that new information to everything else that you know.

I had a good friend in high school, Martin, who absolutely everyone loved. He was athletic, good looking, genuinely kind, and had a great sense of humor. His biggest insecurity though, was that he didn't think he was smart. We shared an English class together and every week we had a vocabulary quiz. By Friday, we were supposed to have learned a list of twenty words that we had been given on Monday. Every Friday, Martin would bomb the quiz with a only a 50% or 60%. It was bringing his grade down and his dad was threatening to pull him off the football team if he could not keep his grades up. It wasn't for lack of trying. Martin told me he was studying the vocab list for two hours every night after school. He was putting more time into that vocab list than any other assignment or subject, but somehow it just would not stick. He would read the definitions over and over and then on Friday, he would remember none of it.

I had an idea as Martin was telling me this and I asked him if he'd be willing to try something different. At that point, he was open to anything. I told him, instead of writing down and trying to memorize the definitions exactly as they were given to us, try paraphrasing every definition into your own words, the way you would describe the word to yourself. I told him, even if it sounded silly or stupid, try making up your own definitions for all of them.

That one change made all the difference in the world. That week he got 100% on the quiz, and then again the next week, and the next week. The entire time, he was stuck thinking he didn't have the brain power that other kids had when all he needed was to start valuing the thoughts and understanding that he already had. When he started writing his own definitions, he was connecting these new words to words, thoughts, and experiences that he already knew. He wasn't simply trying to memorize anymore. He was connecting the new information to pieces of himself. His study time dropped from 8 hours a week on vocab to one hour and his grade in the class improved enough that he got to stay in football and do what he loved.

This is only one example of how self-connected learning can be done. We learn things in a million different ways, with words, with images, with sound, with numbers, theory, and with our very bodies in vast networks of muscle memory and physical skill. We can translate and connect new information to bits of ourselves that we know intimately in myriad different methods and patterns.

I have seen this kind of learning strategy work over and over again in my life and I feel like I've only scratched the surface. I have seen different kinds of learning theory that identify a variety of different levels of thinking and categories of knowledge, but they all seem to boil down to different strategies for connecting new knowledge to all of the other things that we know and feel within ourselves already. People who learn this core principle are able to break out of the robotic systems of rote memorization that have petrified our systems of standardized education. They know that learning is a creative process. I feel like I've only scratched the surface of this. It feels very human and I want to learn more.

Wow, that's a really amazing story - it really does share how we are all different learners and how we "uptake" info.

I love that story. I remember a moment when I found confidence in my own voice and it changed my life.