a childhood lesson about... not learning in lessons
Transcript of this video:
For some reason, walking back from the swimming pool this
morning, I remembered an experience from school when I was
about 15 years old.
I’d taken my Maths O level a year early and done okay,
and was rather frustrated to find that my reward for this
was to be put in a class
for Additional Mathematics in the next
year for another O level.
Well, my interest in mathematics have kind of peaked
with getting that basic exam,
and I rather resented being made
to do this additional subject.
Why, I said to my friends, couldn’t I been rewarded
with a few hours off each week?
Instead, I have to study aspects of maths
that definitely don’t interest me, like calculus.
Whatt use did I have for that? Worse
the class was with an old-fashioned style teacher whose
methods included shouting at those who weren’t getting it,
at best, and throwing bits of chalk at them at worst.
He also had this thing where
the most successful pupils sat at the back
and the ones who were failing were at the front, I suppose,
to be within chalk-throwing distance.
All of this calculated to make me very unmotivated,
and I found myself moving closer
and closer to the front of the room as my interest
in the subject declined and my resistance
to being taught increased.
And then I remember over the Easter holidays,
I got out the not-very-interesting textbook
and just persisted a little bit with bits of it
that I thought had some interest.
The statistics bits were interesting
and I somehow over those two weeks I kind
of taught myself additional mathematics in spite
o, the teacher.
And when I subsequently actually passed the exam, I remember
a meeting with that teacher afterwards
where he looked at me in plain,
and I think frustrated, astonishment at what I’d achieved.
And I wonder if many of you listening
to this have stories that are a bit like this of your own
to illustrate the point that for a great many things
we don’t really want to be taught.
In fact, trying to teach us, especially in,
in the crappy style of that teacher.
But trying to teach us things
actually stops us from learning.
And one of the things I’m trying
to do in things like practice groups
and in my facilitation is to stay
as far away from conventional teaching as possible,
and being more interested in staying curious,
being a curious person myself
and steering away from trying to make people learn things.
Photo by Homo Studio on Unsplash
