How to Make Learning More Efficient
Note: This post deals with a lot of pretty complex topics like education theory and cognitive psychology. Try to set all of that aside for now. I am not trying to suggest sweeping education reforms or drastic change- I am simply making a point about the disconnect between academia and the real world.
How do we learn?Broadly speaking, we learn in educational/classroom settings, and in real-world/self-taught settings. Setting aside all of the differences between those two, let us focus on one: the way information is delivered. Most of the time, classroom learning is theory-focused. You may learn specific skills, but always in the context of a general theory, a barrage of facts and ideas presented within the framework of several bigger concepts. Invariably, you will never use most of these ideas for the rest of your life. But, because you do not know exactly which units of knowledge acquired through classroom learning will be useful at some point later in life, you must learn them all. Does this strike anyone else as inefficient?
Compare this now to learning in the “real world” of employment and specific tasks. When you do not know how to accomplish a specific task, you look up how to do that particular task in the most efficient way possible, in the same way you would look up a single unit of information on Wikipedia when necessary. Learning “Who was the eneral that took Berlin in World War II?” is a lot more efficient than learning the entire history of the war. Certainly, some units of knowledge require the basis of other units of knowledge in order to be understood- but, more often than not, the knowledge required for basic comprehension is minimal compared to detailed study of the whole theory.
This is something I arbitrarily call backwards learning. That is, the student learns a skill required for a specific task. If he is unable to pick up that skill, he goes backwards, and learns the basics required to comprehend that particular skill, and so on, until there is enough knowledge to complete the task. Backwards learning is highly focused, and very efficient.
An excellent analogy is installing software in UNIX-based operating systems. Backwards learning is like determining which package you need to complete that particular task. Traditional learning would be installing all of the dependencies for every possible piece of software out there. Certainly, some core dependencies like basic literacy or math are required for basic functioning in a knowledge economy- the “kernel” of our knowledge, if you will. But the rest is really quite optional.
A practical example: I am currently learning the Ruby programming language. Rather than studying the general theory of object-oriented programming, and going through all of the programmatic concepts of the language, I simply jumped into programming. When I need to accomplish a specific task I do not know how to do, I look it up, and gain a single unit of knowledge- for example how to evaluate a Boolean variable. As I proceed with this task-focused approach, the theory and concepts emerge in my mind naturally. This is learning by doing, which has repeatedly been proven to be much more effective than learning by simple observation or rote memorization.
There are some who learn for the sake of learning. They eventually become well-paid professors. For the rest of us, task-based backwards learning on a need-to-know basis can lead to much greater productivity.
This post may or may not be a result of me having to memorize primate taxonomy for the past three hours as a result of asinine general education requirements.
Related Posts:
Nine Cool Things You Didn’t Know You Could Do With Wikipedia
Reddit hacked
Villainy and Debauchery in Search (Not really)
Dirty Tricks to get Dugg
You have a problem. You just don’t know about it yet.
Certainly anyone who has taken a college class they thought was innane wondered “why?” can relate to what you are saying. For me, it was Geology. A rock is a rock. Do I care?? I didn’t, but I certainly want people around who do. But in order to be intelligent, competent thinkers who can problem solve and use both inductive and deductive reasoning, we must learn to think. A certain level of general education is a necessary step in that process.
“Who was the general that took Berlin in WWII?” Asking the question implies that one knows what WWII was, that there were other WW beside II, that Berlin was a significant site in WWII, that a general was in charge of the force that took control of the city, that the city was invaded by a foreign force, that you understand military hierarchy, that you can count (at least to 2), that you know some of the Roman numeral system, that you understand the use of abbreviations, and that you know some English.
My point is that we have to have some level of eductaion, knowledge, and even mindless facts to put things like that world event in perspective. I too do a lot of backwards learning, especially about technology. But what I often find is that because my knowledge is incomplete, I can’t always make fully informed decisions, and I someimes feel like I don’t have a good enough understanding of the particular topic. I often wish I didn’t have to “back in” to this knowledge, but my days of going to school are long gone.
Good luck with the primate taxonomy. That would rank right there with Geology for me!!!!
Keith, I certainly agree that a certain level of general education is necessary. What we continuously find is that the baseline of education is getting lower and lower -all of the examples you mentioned about World War II are firmly in place by the end of middle school. This is why so many college dropouts can succeed in business, and why the value of a college education is increasingly questioned. I am reminded of an excellent essay by Paul Graham(the founder of Y combinator and other immensely successful startups) in which he claims that “Officially the purpose of schools is to teach kids. In fact their primary purpose is to keep kids locked up in one place for a big chunk of the day so adults can get things done.” I am not saying that a college education is worthless. On the contrary, in college you learn how to interact with a variety of people, collaborate on projects, do independent research, manage your own schedule, and as you put it, you indeed learn how to think critically. The problem is that most classes, from grade school to college(especially big classes in a big university), focus on rote memorization rather than critical thinking. This is fine in grade school for numbers and basic concepts, but in really unnecessary from adolescence onward. Of course, this depends in large part on personality. Some people are more comfortable in classes where they just need to memorize a few facts and be assured of success and some people are…I don’t know, non-conformist?
Having done both approaches quite often, the best advice I can give is to use backwards learning at first, but make sure you follow it up with a theoretical approach down the road.
Learning “why” makes a lot more sense once you’ve seen the practical aspects, and if you keep doing backwards learning all the time you’ll end up with huge holes in your knowledge base. (like learning how to program, but not understanding things like binary, hex, overflow or pointers/memory allocation).
You could compare this to lazy initialization too. Call it lazy learning. ‘backward’ and ‘lazy’ both have such negative sounds. Oh well, call it what it is. I hate PC.
When I was flight instructing we used a building-block approach. A student must be able to hold altitude, turn, climb and descend before they are able to line up for a landing. They must be able to land before soloing. They must learn to navigate before solo cross-country flying, etc. . . It is the educators job to determine the dependencies required for the end-product, and teach them in the most efficient order. Sometimes the student will not understand the reasons behind this ordering so he have to teach that too.
It is the students job to ensure they understand the reasons for learning each atom of knowledge and skill. With one-on-one instruction this is easy. The student says “this is bull” and I would say “no actually. . .”. OTH, a disinterested classroom student will silently fail to learn.
I will not argue with the assertion that our schools have lost track of the end-product. To further your analogy, it is like installing a mix of windows and linux binaries on apple hardware.
50851dc993b0…
50851dc993b02092c354…