THE PITFALLS OF SELF LEARNING

Many students spend a lot of their time reading and learning on their own. It is indeed a very good habit but I wonder why as students progress to a higher level a lot of these students fall by the wayside. It is indeed very demoralising for these students but all is not loss as what they gain is industriousness that will help them in the future if it does when their level of thought maturity moves to a higher level. Here I will try to elaborate and categorise as follows: -

A. Memorising

Most if not all students start learning by way of memorising. Here, the differentiation factor to separate students are their memory skills and how hardworking they are. However some country's syllabus has develop critical thinking skills in their math syllabus to primary six but most countries still teach the elementary level and so I will stick to MEMORISING.

However there may be some students that mature faster and try to put two and two together, or link their knowledge an therefore learn faster. These are the more gifted students and sadly the education system has not put in place teachers to spot and identify these students so as to accelerate their learning curve.

Memorising and good memory is different. Some just memorise and do not know what they are memorising and therefore forget just as easily. However, those with good memory is able to pick up knowledge faster as they can recall what they have learned after some time but these students need to be nurtured. A lot of these students also fall by the wayside as their good memory is not honed to maturity in thought. Here it is most important to identify these students and develop their thinking skills either critical thinking or creative thinking.

You will find a lot of students that rely purely on memory work can do well up to O level but find difficult to cope at advance level. You will find them demoralise especially the hardworking ones. Some will just stop to think that will bring me to the next part.

B. Thinking

For thinking students it does not matter if they do well or not in their studies. What is more important is the thought they put into their experience. If they think long over their problem whatever it is, I believe this is the prerequisite for action. They will start to act on their thoughts. Students who do not think are the ones that are easily influence because they let others think for them without even the thought of what they learn right or wrong. This brings me to the next part.

C. Learning

The dangers in learning is thinking that what you have learned is right but later finding out that what you thought is right is absolutely wrong. Knowing that you are wrong and not knowing why prompts you to seek knowledge. Some of these students just stress out and give up on learning. For these students they must learn to unlearn and then relearn then all will be fine This brings me to the next part.

D. Basic Knowledge vs Advance Knowledge

A lot of science and mathematics topics are thought to the level of understanding to a particular level. For example an astronaut at a space station is said to experience no gravity at the basic level...why because it is easier to understand but at an advance level that is not the case and a higher level of understanding has to be put in place....or elements in a chemical compound s are thought to bind following the octate rule but there must be a paradigm shift at a higher level. Students must be thought to UNLEARN AND RELEARN every step of their learning curve or else they will be very confuse. They must also learn to adopt paradigm shifts to move away from the norm.

Well I hope my thought today will help.

Vernacular School & English Language

Two very sensitive topics to talk on depending which side of the fence you are sitting on. As they say education is a sensitive topic as it touches into the aspects of the lives of nearly everybody or anybody that have a school going child.

Education as they say is also recession proof as most of us placed a very high importance in education and would not hesitate to spend on education for our children. Economically, it also makes sense as we are investing in our future.

Let us ask ask 1 simple question to start us thinking.

Does Vernacular School and English contribute positively to education?

If the answer is yes on both counts, why is there opposition to abolish vernacular school and opposition to retain English as the medium of instruction for Mathematics and Science. The opposition are both tangent to each other.

Economics and not politics will take its course in deciding if vernacular schools are here to stay and if English will be retained or not. We shall see..

Be Careful you may understand wrongly

"My parents don't understand me"
This may be a common complain of a teenager.
"This is for your own good. You will understand when you grow up"
This may be a common advice from a parent when meteing out a punishment to their teenage child.

In pursuing knowledge, teenagers may also understand wrongly what they learn especially in Science and Mathematics and they go through life thinking what they have learned is correct which in actual fact they understand wrongly.

This is where a good tutor comes in to point the student in the right direction. So as parent, you must look for signs that your child may have learnt wrongly.

Law of Compounding Knowledge

In my earlier post I shared about the faster in reaching maturity in thought, the faster you will shift to the understanding part of learning. I also talked that in this phase, you understand exponientially.

Let me express further. Understanding exponientially is like compounding interest. Here it is only compounding knowledge. However like compounding interest, interest has to be added periodically. To compound knowledge, we must like interest, add periodically to our knowledge or seek knowledge, then we will find that in time to come, we would be able to understand complex problem and express them factually.

Understanding or Doing

As I go about my daily tutoring, I found that for the most part western education concentrates on the understanding when teaching mathematics. Well initially I do subscribe to that premise but as I teach different type of syllabus and different type of nationality, my views has definitely change.

First, to understand, maturity of mind and actions are required and it is for the tutor or teacher to identify and to adopt teaching techniques on that basis. Different students mature differently in their thoughts at different ages. Having said that, to learn mathematics, first the proper methods and techniques have to be taught. A student has to diligently do the math either in thought or on worksheet to progress and mature.

I read a book called the outlier, and it mentioned that to be good at whatever we do, we have to do it for 10,000 hours. So why does some students progress further even without the necessary work output. Well Mathematics unlike sports can be done in thought. Well genius in Math, are always busy calculating in thought. Or if you want your children to progress, you must always tease their mind with mathematics so that they can progress, thats how the doing part comes in. The faster a student reaches maturity, the earlier they will progress to the understanding part.

As for the understanding, in understanding that is where the exponiential progress kicks in and this may lead to inculcating a habit of undertanding whatever things that we do.

So, I believe that the progress in Science and Mathematics have to do with a tutor first guiding on the basic methods and recognising patterns. Of course, memory training and boosting is essential for retaining what has been taught.

Remember, there is no short cut.

AM I STUDYING NOW RELEVANT

I have been asked this question many many times not by average students but by students in the top 2 percentile. I do not blame them for asking this question as they would want to know what they are studying now would be relevant to what they need in the future. As students are bombarded with information, they would want to filiter out the not so important information so that they are efficient in learning.

Well, guess what, now it is not about learning, it is about acquiring knowledge. If you focus on acquiring knowledge, then it may be useful in the future. As Steve Jobs said about connecting the dots......"You cannot connect the dots looking forward, you can only connect the dots looking backwards"

On Line learaning

Is on line learning the way forward for kids up to nineteen? With online applications, games, music and videos competing for your clicks and views, will online learning win your page views. Do not expect a student up to age 19 to learn on his/her own on the computer, it will not work. Games music and videos will always win hands down.
In my opinion, online learning must always be accompanied by supervision. It will complement and make a class livelier and more interesting.
So do not hope that buying or paying for online learning products is going to help, it helps but must always be accompanied by some kind of guidance