The Anatomy of Learning

A memo for myself about the anatomy of learning.

When thinking about learning and teaching, we seem to forget about the fundamental facts.

1. Our brain is a neural network, a very complex interconnected mesh of simple logical switches.
2. Nature invented that having a large number of these switches, and the ability of changing the connections allows an entity to adapt to the environment on individual level. This method is of course much faster than the evolutionary adaptation, because that requires hundreds of generations instead of one.
3. Nature also invented that the ability of transferring the knowledge between generations allows the individual not starting from zero, but with the cumulative knowledge of previous generations.

Of course "nature invented" means the original, long-long generation drift, caused by the statistical difference between the little bit better life chance of individuals having a more lucky pattern set in their brain.

What we have today in the human brain is the result of this long evolution. Our brain has a coded period (rather say pre-built structures) to learn together with the community adaptation. Later, most of us lose these structures and the behavior changes to using (90%, utilization of knowledge in practical tasks) or transferring (9%, teaching).

What is the point in this? Check this enumeration...

You think you are open to new ideas. In fact, you have a very little chance to be open to them, if only a very small percentage of the topics, where you successfully kept the original, learning structures. If you don't practice learning in a regular basis, that ability goes very far into the background. You don't use it, because you actually do things by utilizing, or teach therefore transfer the current knowledge. You don't regularly question what you base your life and personality on (which is, again, a side operation of your brain).

If you want to learn anything, that means you want to build new structures in your brain, a new connection set in your neural network. If that is not connected seriously into the existing structures, if your everyday thinking will not pass that segment in a regular basis every day, that structure will dissolve just like any other useless memory. Maybe it will not disappear, but a faint memory is definitely not a useful knowledge. It is definitely not enough to repeatedly re-learn to "keep it fresh" - unless you have a very exceptional brain that is able to do this. For all the rest: only try to learn what you need, and use it regularly. Otherwise you just waste your time.

So, if you want to keep something in your brain, you must tie yourself to it. You must need that knowledge, or otherwise connect other interesting events to them. This is how the brain control methods, memory hooks work. However, with this method, you can only keep static information in your brain, like a photo album. In the same way, the current teaching methods in the west, try to make the learning material "interesting" by adding pictures, making it mosaic-like, from interesting, colorful tiles. Yes, the brain will be able to repeat the content of those tiles - but this is not the aim of teaching. We learn not to "have" the information, but to modify our brain structure for understanding the world. Our brain must change and adapt, not only to hold, but to utilize the very complex knowledge structure of our civilization. It is not enough to faintly remember to the laws of maths, physics, biology or psychology. We must use them to understand the world around us, to become responsible adults who can improve things, instead of a mental state of a lifelong wondering child.

This is why (the proper) elementary school system is so essential. It has to literally squeeze the driest material of our cumulated knowledge into a child's flexible, open brain. That brain must be transformed into a more complex structure that is able to keep, later invent the connections among various topics, so that child will become an independent, responsible entity in our real world. It is an epic failure to convert the material to some toy-like thing because the child wants that. Yes, definitely, the child wants to have fun. But to keep the human civilization alive, that child should have to learn separating fun from work; learn to have fun and learn to work, separately.

The brain of the child accepts the knowledge of our civilization, because it is coded to adapt to the environment in the early ages. They can even learn using guns and grenades, kill and die by orders, if the environment requires that; shamefully this feature is tested and actively used today all around the world.

In a good school system, we should show to the child the structure of a working civilization: the working, caring community of children of the same age, with a tutor or tutors, who passes them huge amount of information but want them to use it creatively. Ask questions, form new ideas, which are childish of course, but a good teacher (who has the time and is not frustrated by micromanagement) can teach children to analyze their own ideas, find the good and the weak points, show the ways of improvement.

I woke up so early this morning because I see our "western"education system does not consider these basic facts, therefore it must fail. A child in a developing country has much greater chance to became a useful adult, but they don't have the opportunity to utilize that ability - while most of our children of the west are doomed to become a useless adult.