How we stall our learning
<my current thoughts>
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Growing up, we take what our teachers/parents/seniors tell us as truth. Listening to someone saying something new makes us think they know BETTER. They just know something MORE. Information gap can be filled easily. Till the time we fill this information gap (if we do), we think we are less capable than the ones we admire.
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Books (the way most are written) make us feel like there are millions of ideas that are far from our reach. When in fact, most books expand on very few ideas (just reframed in many cases) and add a lot of gibberish. More is not better or smart.
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We equate credibility of an argument with confidence. Anyone superior or assertive must be right – is a heuristic we all abuse. Same goes for number of people saying it – more people saying it pushes you to believe it. Repetition (continuous exposure) becomes the proof.
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In many cases, we focus on trying to learn how things are put together rather than what things do (are used for). It’s easier to understand (and more useful) when you know the why (or the intuition of it at least) first. It’s no fun learning statistics without being able to imagine all that one can do with it.
Yes, coconut 🌴 tree gives coconut, not mango 🥭. And there are swans that are black!
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How we stall others:
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People who successfully learn something (or they think so), forget how they made that journey and fail to empathise with a new learner – what was tricky to understand, what was useful to know, what was natural to me but not so for others.
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Some (many?) have a non-conscious tendency to either hide something that can make things easier to understand or make something sound more complex than it is, in order to continue to be seen as someone knows better (more).
#wip #learning