Your point here makes a lot of sense to me. But going back to elementary school for a minute, I think there's another possibility. When you learned about Sumer but also Columbus and also the American Revolution, you were picking up a lot of background information that you take for granted now. Do you know (now) that the Sumerians didn't have telephones? Do you know that big sailing vessels were important in history? Do you know that machine guns came around sometime between, say, the American Revolution and World War II? Do you know that people of the past spoke a bunch of different languages, and some of them had writing but some didn't? That and an unfathomable amount of other background stuff is what you really learned by studying specific topics in elementary school. That's what I think, anyway.
That's definitely possible. But watching my 6-year-old niece, I'm astonished at how much background knowledge she's amassed not from formal schooling (she hasn't had much) but from her normal kid activities. Like she knows that people in medieval times didn't have guns or phones because she's watched the old Robin Hood movie several times, and because she has a castle playset where all the figurines have swords and shields and no guns nor phones. She will certainly have experiences like that in school, but there her teachers will try to teach her these things explicitly, especially as she gets older, and I think none of that will stick as well as what she picks up incidentally from doing things she's interested in. I think that's what I'm trying to gesture at––that learning seems to be more durable when it's the subtextual part of an experience that is compelling in its own right, rather than trying to short circuit all of that by just telling people stuff directly, even though the latter seems much more efficient.
It seems to me that school is a glorified daycare.
A good way to keep kids under control in a room is to make them believe that they have to learn a bunch of facts and abstract skills in order to succeed in life.
Kids in school gives parents time to go work.
After work parents come home tired as well as the kids from school. At that point is when parents try to teach some of their own skills and learnings but might not be opting out optimal. So the children end up forgetting most of school learnings and were deprived of most of their parents potential teachings.
Parents could teach more useful things to their children because they would teach things that are practical and are true and tested to be useful in the real world. Also one on one teaching is much more efficient.
Jul 23, 2022·edited Jul 23, 2022Liked by Adam Mastroianni
I find my brain has a"Raiders of the Lost Ark" type warehouse stacked with crates. Ask me from a cold start to write everything I know about (Sumer)(fill in any topic) and it won't fill a sticky note. But let the situation warm up, put me at a table with 2 or 3 other folks all working/discussing at remembering tidbits about (Sumer), and my brain will...churn. Memories will be word-associated, triggering crates to be prybarred open in that metaphorical warehouse, dust billowing. Facts about (Sumer) expressed at the table will be increasingly met with "Oh, yeah, that sounds familiar", "Oh, that's right!", all the way to actual offering of my own tidbits of information.
Playing any game of "Trivial Pursuit" or keenly following an episode of "Jeopardy" will start that churning resurrection of knowledge/memories.
A clearcut example in my life was a few years ago. I sat down to draw a map of the little town where I spent ages 4-7. Casting my mind back thru the decades, the map began mostly blank and what was there was pretty dry. Then the churn began. Here was the barbershop, here was the drygoods store, here was the school, here was the gas station...and it kept going. I didn't just remember the gas station, but the name of the owner...and she had an iron Case eagle logo-statue...and before I finally called it quits, I had a richly detailed map of landmarks, places, and names.
I guess it's all there. Just requires a sincere need to haul it out in the open.
"[Students] understand that they will gain great power if they just keep going." I've always had trouble keeping going when I get frustrated learning new stuff. I learned something cool from a podcast episode https://hubermanlab.com/using-failures-movement-and-balance-to-learn-faster/ (could try 29m15s) which has really changed my thinking and behavior around frustration and continuing through it. Basically the feeling of frustration when learning is evidence of increased brain plasticity.
I don't know any of this stuff first hand, so sorry if it's a bad paraphrase of an oversimplification but FWIW my neuroscientist friend says it's a decent model:
1) During active learning (e.g. trumpet practice), little markers are being left on the brain indicating where structural changes should be made to encode that learning
2) These structural changes to the brain that encode medium->long term learning mostly happen later when we're sleeping
3) The effectiveness of the markers being placed is correlated with the presence of a particular neuromodulator cocktail in the brain (epinephrine, dopamine, and acetylcholine if that means anything to someone else)
4) This neuromodulator cocktail is released when we make errors, i.e. when we recognize our performance differing from our model of how it should have gone
5) We can feel the presence of this neuromodulator cocktail as frustration. (measured presence of these correlates strongly with reports of the experience of frustration)
So the conclusion here is that feeling frustrated when trying a new skill is actually evidence that your brain is in a great chemical bath for doing the most effective learning. For me, this principled argument goes a lot farther than the standard "when the going gets tough, the tough get going" advice. I'm not tough ◡̈
That sounds like a useful way of reframing it! I think that's an important vibe that formal education doesn't convey very well, that when you feel like you're not getting it, something important is going on.
Thanks for this beautiful piece. I probably won’t remember much except that I felt inspired and moved by what learning could feel like. I had a similar experience with a psychology teacher in high school. He had fun, positive vibes. He also told us on the fist day of class that he quit his job as a banker to teach, which intrigued me at the time as someone who felt that a job solely for money felt wrong. I still remember that, over 10 years later, studied psychology as an undergrad, and am now a grad student studying child development. Still not sure if this is the path for me, but I will always remember that teacher.
Don't you think this forgetting of learned information has to do with the fact that you, in particular, didn't ever need that learned information again, so your learned pathway through the synapses and neurons of your brain, freshly triggered and ready for new use was never used again? And thus, you forgot?
So most of us forget alot, because we, in particular, never use this particular learned information again, ever. When you learn something, it will not stay there in your brain forever and be easily accessible. You have to use the new pathway to deepen the learning. You don't, you will forget the learning.
So: put yourself into situations where you need knowledge about Sumer, and voila. Or don't and forget. Like I learned to hit a ball thrown angry at me by a pitcher, and when I do this regularly, I can hit it easily. If I stop doing that for ten years, I cannot even hit a ball set up on a tee, you know.
It's true that unused knowledge is more likely to disappear, but the time limits that our brains set for us seem cruel. I might find a use for something only a month after learning it, or a year, or ten years, but it disappears long before that. If we only get to have a rolling window of memory, our mental lives seem awfully impoverished. Anything can be brute-forced into long-term memory (see the Anki comments), and I don't have strong objections to that other than a sort of gut feeling, perhaps irrational, that it seems wrong. Anyway, this is why I think it's fortunate that there are things that we seem to remember for a very long time even without reuse or rehearsal, and why I think we should seek to teach and learn these things, which is more about putting ourselves in environments and having experiences than it is deliberately acquiring knowledge and skills.
Thanks! From reading your Substack I wish I could have taken your science class, I bet the vibes rock. Instead I took a class with a science teacher who kept a paddle in the closet "in case they start allowing corporal punishment in schools again."
Haha thanks, my class definitely got weird at times as you might imagine. My joke was that I wanted to put shock pads in the seats so that I could give out wake up calls with the push of a button.
Great article! It's timely for me since I've recently taken to blaming lingering Covid side effects for memory lapses. On the other hand, my wife says I was always kind of like that, so probably it's a normal situation of remembering vibes, not slides.
I do wonder if the idea of "vibe management" should be considered with some care. It strikes me that the great thing about vibes is that they aren't really "taught", and yet there they are. Maybe they're so powerful in part because they're internally generated, and so personal. They're our take on things, not necessarily the intended take on behalf of the purveyor of vibes, whoever or whatever that may be.
If vibes are a bastion of individualism, that seems antithetical to management.
Been enjoying this Substack ever since I discovered it a few weeks ago by the way!
You're right, "management" is too corporate a word for the way I think we should care for vibes. Maybe "curation" is better, but even that one feels like it's being co-opted. But maybe it's better illustrated through examples, in the spirit of vibes themselves. If you're hiring a teacher, a reasonable thing to ask is whether they have appropriate credentials and knowledge. But far more important, I think, is that a teacher is the kind of person that a student would look up to. If they can establish that vibe, pretty much anything else can follow. I accepted that my teachers knew something that I didn't, and so we had basically a commercial relationship where I gave them my attention in exchange for their knowledge. But a few teachers were just people I wanted to be more like, and these are the ones I learned a lot more from, most of it ineffable. So "managing" that vibe would be more like "not caring much about a teacher's background, but caring a lot about the rapport they establish with their students".
Good article! I have to admit I was skeptical at first, then less so, then more so, on and on for the whole thing. It seems like it works for him, and it enhances his appreciation for the things he likes, and he doesn't bother doing it for the things he likes less. But whenever I read a book with the intention of writing about it later, I enjoy it so much less, and I wonder if approaching all incoming facts with the filter of "should I deliberately remember this?" prevents you from experiencing things fully. Have you tried it?
I've become a complete Anki convert and use it every day. It's extremely empowering, before I was giving up non fiction because I couldn't remember anything without a lot of additional effort. Now I am enthusiastic about it again. Wouldn't use it for literature or something fun, but very helpful for things where you want to apply the learnings to your actual life.
- a brief idea comes to my mind and I write it in an Anki card
- when Anki reminds me of that idea, I elaborate further
- sometimes i get more thoughts about the idea before Anki reminds me. In that case i search for the idea in anki and expand further
In a few weeks i might have effortlessly turned that flashcard into enough content for a blog post.
Additionally, it is a handy system to keep me reviewing my thoughts instead if having them sink into my notes app and forgetting them even with the vibes (I’ve found thoughts in my non-Anki notes that I don’t remember having written nor recall the vibe of it).
I feel that's definitely true for me. But I often don't read with the only intention to make cards; I read normally, but if I find something interesting I add it to a watch-later list, and whenever I feel like "wait darn I am forgetting that great article I read", I go back and *then* ankify the entire thing, mostly just clozes on good quotes and all.
I've tried and it indeed gets in the way of experiencing things fully. I don't know exactly why that's the case.
But I have one possible explanation for this. When I am reading something with a particular purpose in mind, I tend to skim over (or overlook, or however way you put it) stuffs that doesn't fit that purpose and as consequence of this, my brain only register the points which is relevant to the purpose and I have no memory others points, but in the end, all the points, not just the ones relevant to the purpose, makes a coherent whole.
Thank you for this unorthodox & thought provoking essay, Adam! I'm really going to ponder these ideas.
This notion of embodied understanding (as opposed to cerebral) ended up being the surprise focus of an analysis video Michelle Jia (of Sundogg Substack fame) and I did on a popular video journalist, Johnny Harris. Put in EH-language: give your audience concrete examples to convey the vibe first, then give the abstract ideas. Here it is for reference :) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dIKsEhX-vyU
This also feels related to the recent emphasis placed on a sense of belonging in educational environments. Dr Susie Wise's "Design for Belonging" is a great example; as is "The ABC's of How We Learn" by Schwarz et al, where Belonging is the "B" despite not being as heavily quantifiable as all of their other topics.
Vibes stick, it really feels true. Facts are fleeting - that does too. How do we use this to better retain? To alchemize dross into golden [rhymes with “retain”]
This is interesting, provocative, and an element of a far more complex process that leads to learning, recognition and recall. While the emotional context of a learning experience contributes greatly to that which is retained, the text limits of this essay prevent a more comprehensive exploration of this topic. Although it is not the authors intention, and this is an interesting perspective on an enormously complex and important topic, it runs the risk of leaving readers with the impression that simply introducing humor and fun will dramatically enhance the retention of information. Clearly emotion plays a significant role in learning, consider how the trauma of child abuse impacts the learning experience and subsequent life choices of of an individual for decades afterwards. That said, I am wondering what and how college students who are studying to become teachers, are taught so as to optimize their future students pedagogic experiences?
I don’t know what graduate students are taught, but I did work for a year in a pedagogy center that trained graduate students to teach in their disciplines. There was a lot of good knowledge there, but nobody ever grappled with the problem of students forgetting everything they learned in our classes. Our responsibility, and therefore our thinking, ended when we turned in final grades.
I agree that it’s not just a matter of adding jokes to class—the vibe of “this is all just a pointless game so let’s just sit around and tell jokes” is a bad one too!
Good points, and somewhat similar to the thesis of a book called the Power of Moments. (Also, the Sacklers’ company sold only 4% of opioids, maybe google “illusory truth effect”)
Jul 13, 2022·edited Jul 13, 2022Liked by Adam Mastroianni
Aside all else, I think we're all compelled to think learning must serve a bigger purpose that is only going to pay off in the future. School is a place that prepares you for an exam instead of showing the multiple possibilities for further learning (of course, this would not serve the reigning economic system but one can dream, right?). As you mentioned in another comment, classes should feel more like invitations, I plan on going back to college the next year and I already feel like it's going to be fun, precisely because that's what I'm looking for.
Yes! One reason I liked college so much is that it felt like I was allowed to explore lots of possibilities, even despite many of the structures discouraging this (like grades). I'll never forget when I was talking to a fellow psych major and she was like, "oh yeah I started an independent project with this professor" and I was like wait, you can just approach professors and start doing research with them? The classes themselves never really taught me this, but being around a few highly agentic people did.
Thanks for reminding me of why I have always loved school. Most teachers have not contributed to my love of school. I've had to do almost all of it on my own. This is why I tell new students that they will get out of university what they put into it. (Disclosure: I am 64 and in the dissertation writing phase of my PhD, having obtained five degrees over the years since 1978. But not an academic. I just keep going back to school.)
Yes, the best teachers I've had seemed like they gave invitations rather than instructions. They were doing something that looked fun and I wanted to do it too. But when they don't do that, you have to go find the fun yourself.
Your point here makes a lot of sense to me. But going back to elementary school for a minute, I think there's another possibility. When you learned about Sumer but also Columbus and also the American Revolution, you were picking up a lot of background information that you take for granted now. Do you know (now) that the Sumerians didn't have telephones? Do you know that big sailing vessels were important in history? Do you know that machine guns came around sometime between, say, the American Revolution and World War II? Do you know that people of the past spoke a bunch of different languages, and some of them had writing but some didn't? That and an unfathomable amount of other background stuff is what you really learned by studying specific topics in elementary school. That's what I think, anyway.
That's definitely possible. But watching my 6-year-old niece, I'm astonished at how much background knowledge she's amassed not from formal schooling (she hasn't had much) but from her normal kid activities. Like she knows that people in medieval times didn't have guns or phones because she's watched the old Robin Hood movie several times, and because she has a castle playset where all the figurines have swords and shields and no guns nor phones. She will certainly have experiences like that in school, but there her teachers will try to teach her these things explicitly, especially as she gets older, and I think none of that will stick as well as what she picks up incidentally from doing things she's interested in. I think that's what I'm trying to gesture at––that learning seems to be more durable when it's the subtextual part of an experience that is compelling in its own right, rather than trying to short circuit all of that by just telling people stuff directly, even though the latter seems much more efficient.
I'm unschooled, have never taken a history class and I know all the background info you mentioned; purely by osmosis.
It seems to me that school is a glorified daycare.
A good way to keep kids under control in a room is to make them believe that they have to learn a bunch of facts and abstract skills in order to succeed in life.
Kids in school gives parents time to go work.
After work parents come home tired as well as the kids from school. At that point is when parents try to teach some of their own skills and learnings but might not be opting out optimal. So the children end up forgetting most of school learnings and were deprived of most of their parents potential teachings.
Parents could teach more useful things to their children because they would teach things that are practical and are true and tested to be useful in the real world. Also one on one teaching is much more efficient.
I find my brain has a"Raiders of the Lost Ark" type warehouse stacked with crates. Ask me from a cold start to write everything I know about (Sumer)(fill in any topic) and it won't fill a sticky note. But let the situation warm up, put me at a table with 2 or 3 other folks all working/discussing at remembering tidbits about (Sumer), and my brain will...churn. Memories will be word-associated, triggering crates to be prybarred open in that metaphorical warehouse, dust billowing. Facts about (Sumer) expressed at the table will be increasingly met with "Oh, yeah, that sounds familiar", "Oh, that's right!", all the way to actual offering of my own tidbits of information.
Playing any game of "Trivial Pursuit" or keenly following an episode of "Jeopardy" will start that churning resurrection of knowledge/memories.
A clearcut example in my life was a few years ago. I sat down to draw a map of the little town where I spent ages 4-7. Casting my mind back thru the decades, the map began mostly blank and what was there was pretty dry. Then the churn began. Here was the barbershop, here was the drygoods store, here was the school, here was the gas station...and it kept going. I didn't just remember the gas station, but the name of the owner...and she had an iron Case eagle logo-statue...and before I finally called it quits, I had a richly detailed map of landmarks, places, and names.
I guess it's all there. Just requires a sincere need to haul it out in the open.
Ha! That's a good way of putting it. Sounds like your brain has "top men" working on it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ylJfYaYDCB8
"[Students] understand that they will gain great power if they just keep going." I've always had trouble keeping going when I get frustrated learning new stuff. I learned something cool from a podcast episode https://hubermanlab.com/using-failures-movement-and-balance-to-learn-faster/ (could try 29m15s) which has really changed my thinking and behavior around frustration and continuing through it. Basically the feeling of frustration when learning is evidence of increased brain plasticity.
I don't know any of this stuff first hand, so sorry if it's a bad paraphrase of an oversimplification but FWIW my neuroscientist friend says it's a decent model:
1) During active learning (e.g. trumpet practice), little markers are being left on the brain indicating where structural changes should be made to encode that learning
2) These structural changes to the brain that encode medium->long term learning mostly happen later when we're sleeping
3) The effectiveness of the markers being placed is correlated with the presence of a particular neuromodulator cocktail in the brain (epinephrine, dopamine, and acetylcholine if that means anything to someone else)
4) This neuromodulator cocktail is released when we make errors, i.e. when we recognize our performance differing from our model of how it should have gone
5) We can feel the presence of this neuromodulator cocktail as frustration. (measured presence of these correlates strongly with reports of the experience of frustration)
So the conclusion here is that feeling frustrated when trying a new skill is actually evidence that your brain is in a great chemical bath for doing the most effective learning. For me, this principled argument goes a lot farther than the standard "when the going gets tough, the tough get going" advice. I'm not tough ◡̈
That sounds like a useful way of reframing it! I think that's an important vibe that formal education doesn't convey very well, that when you feel like you're not getting it, something important is going on.
Thanks for this beautiful piece. I probably won’t remember much except that I felt inspired and moved by what learning could feel like. I had a similar experience with a psychology teacher in high school. He had fun, positive vibes. He also told us on the fist day of class that he quit his job as a banker to teach, which intrigued me at the time as someone who felt that a job solely for money felt wrong. I still remember that, over 10 years later, studied psychology as an undergrad, and am now a grad student studying child development. Still not sure if this is the path for me, but I will always remember that teacher.
Man, that rules!
Don't you think this forgetting of learned information has to do with the fact that you, in particular, didn't ever need that learned information again, so your learned pathway through the synapses and neurons of your brain, freshly triggered and ready for new use was never used again? And thus, you forgot?
So most of us forget alot, because we, in particular, never use this particular learned information again, ever. When you learn something, it will not stay there in your brain forever and be easily accessible. You have to use the new pathway to deepen the learning. You don't, you will forget the learning.
So: put yourself into situations where you need knowledge about Sumer, and voila. Or don't and forget. Like I learned to hit a ball thrown angry at me by a pitcher, and when I do this regularly, I can hit it easily. If I stop doing that for ten years, I cannot even hit a ball set up on a tee, you know.
It's true that unused knowledge is more likely to disappear, but the time limits that our brains set for us seem cruel. I might find a use for something only a month after learning it, or a year, or ten years, but it disappears long before that. If we only get to have a rolling window of memory, our mental lives seem awfully impoverished. Anything can be brute-forced into long-term memory (see the Anki comments), and I don't have strong objections to that other than a sort of gut feeling, perhaps irrational, that it seems wrong. Anyway, this is why I think it's fortunate that there are things that we seem to remember for a very long time even without reuse or rehearsal, and why I think we should seek to teach and learn these things, which is more about putting ourselves in environments and having experiences than it is deliberately acquiring knowledge and skills.
As a high school science teacher for the last six years -- absolutely so true, every teacher should have to read this.
Thanks! From reading your Substack I wish I could have taken your science class, I bet the vibes rock. Instead I took a class with a science teacher who kept a paddle in the closet "in case they start allowing corporal punishment in schools again."
Haha thanks, my class definitely got weird at times as you might imagine. My joke was that I wanted to put shock pads in the seats so that I could give out wake up calls with the push of a button.
Great article! It's timely for me since I've recently taken to blaming lingering Covid side effects for memory lapses. On the other hand, my wife says I was always kind of like that, so probably it's a normal situation of remembering vibes, not slides.
I do wonder if the idea of "vibe management" should be considered with some care. It strikes me that the great thing about vibes is that they aren't really "taught", and yet there they are. Maybe they're so powerful in part because they're internally generated, and so personal. They're our take on things, not necessarily the intended take on behalf of the purveyor of vibes, whoever or whatever that may be.
If vibes are a bastion of individualism, that seems antithetical to management.
Been enjoying this Substack ever since I discovered it a few weeks ago by the way!
Thanks! I appreciate you reading.
You're right, "management" is too corporate a word for the way I think we should care for vibes. Maybe "curation" is better, but even that one feels like it's being co-opted. But maybe it's better illustrated through examples, in the spirit of vibes themselves. If you're hiring a teacher, a reasonable thing to ask is whether they have appropriate credentials and knowledge. But far more important, I think, is that a teacher is the kind of person that a student would look up to. If they can establish that vibe, pretty much anything else can follow. I accepted that my teachers knew something that I didn't, and so we had basically a commercial relationship where I gave them my attention in exchange for their knowledge. But a few teachers were just people I wanted to be more like, and these are the ones I learned a lot more from, most of it ineffable. So "managing" that vibe would be more like "not caring much about a teacher's background, but caring a lot about the rapport they establish with their students".
Have you tried spaced repetition? I found this article illuminating: http://augmentingcognition.com/ltm.html
Good article! I have to admit I was skeptical at first, then less so, then more so, on and on for the whole thing. It seems like it works for him, and it enhances his appreciation for the things he likes, and he doesn't bother doing it for the things he likes less. But whenever I read a book with the intention of writing about it later, I enjoy it so much less, and I wonder if approaching all incoming facts with the filter of "should I deliberately remember this?" prevents you from experiencing things fully. Have you tried it?
I've become a complete Anki convert and use it every day. It's extremely empowering, before I was giving up non fiction because I couldn't remember anything without a lot of additional effort. Now I am enthusiastic about it again. Wouldn't use it for literature or something fun, but very helpful for things where you want to apply the learnings to your actual life.
Good to know! That shifts my preferences in favor
Anki is an essential.
I also use it to elaborate my thoughts:
- a brief idea comes to my mind and I write it in an Anki card
- when Anki reminds me of that idea, I elaborate further
- sometimes i get more thoughts about the idea before Anki reminds me. In that case i search for the idea in anki and expand further
In a few weeks i might have effortlessly turned that flashcard into enough content for a blog post.
Additionally, it is a handy system to keep me reviewing my thoughts instead if having them sink into my notes app and forgetting them even with the vibes (I’ve found thoughts in my non-Anki notes that I don’t remember having written nor recall the vibe of it).
I feel that's definitely true for me. But I often don't read with the only intention to make cards; I read normally, but if I find something interesting I add it to a watch-later list, and whenever I feel like "wait darn I am forgetting that great article I read", I go back and *then* ankify the entire thing, mostly just clozes on good quotes and all.
I've tried and it indeed gets in the way of experiencing things fully. I don't know exactly why that's the case.
But I have one possible explanation for this. When I am reading something with a particular purpose in mind, I tend to skim over (or overlook, or however way you put it) stuffs that doesn't fit that purpose and as consequence of this, my brain only register the points which is relevant to the purpose and I have no memory others points, but in the end, all the points, not just the ones relevant to the purpose, makes a coherent whole.
Thank you for this unorthodox & thought provoking essay, Adam! I'm really going to ponder these ideas.
This notion of embodied understanding (as opposed to cerebral) ended up being the surprise focus of an analysis video Michelle Jia (of Sundogg Substack fame) and I did on a popular video journalist, Johnny Harris. Put in EH-language: give your audience concrete examples to convey the vibe first, then give the abstract ideas. Here it is for reference :) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dIKsEhX-vyU
This also feels related to the recent emphasis placed on a sense of belonging in educational environments. Dr Susie Wise's "Design for Belonging" is a great example; as is "The ABC's of How We Learn" by Schwarz et al, where Belonging is the "B" despite not being as heavily quantifiable as all of their other topics.
Thanks for sharing!
This is amazing 👏👏👏 I can't remember so much, but I definitely remember teachers that made me feel good, that made me confident.
That what is going in my mind buuuh, history is so amazing and thrilling
Vibes stick, it really feels true. Facts are fleeting - that does too. How do we use this to better retain? To alchemize dross into golden [rhymes with “retain”]
This is interesting, provocative, and an element of a far more complex process that leads to learning, recognition and recall. While the emotional context of a learning experience contributes greatly to that which is retained, the text limits of this essay prevent a more comprehensive exploration of this topic. Although it is not the authors intention, and this is an interesting perspective on an enormously complex and important topic, it runs the risk of leaving readers with the impression that simply introducing humor and fun will dramatically enhance the retention of information. Clearly emotion plays a significant role in learning, consider how the trauma of child abuse impacts the learning experience and subsequent life choices of of an individual for decades afterwards. That said, I am wondering what and how college students who are studying to become teachers, are taught so as to optimize their future students pedagogic experiences?
I don’t know what graduate students are taught, but I did work for a year in a pedagogy center that trained graduate students to teach in their disciplines. There was a lot of good knowledge there, but nobody ever grappled with the problem of students forgetting everything they learned in our classes. Our responsibility, and therefore our thinking, ended when we turned in final grades.
I agree that it’s not just a matter of adding jokes to class—the vibe of “this is all just a pointless game so let’s just sit around and tell jokes” is a bad one too!
Good points, and somewhat similar to the thesis of a book called the Power of Moments. (Also, the Sacklers’ company sold only 4% of opioids, maybe google “illusory truth effect”)
Aside all else, I think we're all compelled to think learning must serve a bigger purpose that is only going to pay off in the future. School is a place that prepares you for an exam instead of showing the multiple possibilities for further learning (of course, this would not serve the reigning economic system but one can dream, right?). As you mentioned in another comment, classes should feel more like invitations, I plan on going back to college the next year and I already feel like it's going to be fun, precisely because that's what I'm looking for.
Yes! One reason I liked college so much is that it felt like I was allowed to explore lots of possibilities, even despite many of the structures discouraging this (like grades). I'll never forget when I was talking to a fellow psych major and she was like, "oh yeah I started an independent project with this professor" and I was like wait, you can just approach professors and start doing research with them? The classes themselves never really taught me this, but being around a few highly agentic people did.
Hope you enjoy your return!
Thanks for reminding me of why I have always loved school. Most teachers have not contributed to my love of school. I've had to do almost all of it on my own. This is why I tell new students that they will get out of university what they put into it. (Disclosure: I am 64 and in the dissertation writing phase of my PhD, having obtained five degrees over the years since 1978. But not an academic. I just keep going back to school.)
Yes, the best teachers I've had seemed like they gave invitations rather than instructions. They were doing something that looked fun and I wanted to do it too. But when they don't do that, you have to go find the fun yourself.