My different approach to learning

“Education is the kindling of a flame, not the filling of a vessel.” — Socrates

Learning is something very personal to me. It’s about developing my thoughts and ideas irrespective of anyone else’s thoughts. Learning, for me, is about surpassing the boundaries of the social truths, finding my truths, and expanding them to new horizons.

I would prefer to ignite rather than imbibe. I would prefer to be a spark rather than a sponge.

With an unconventional learning goal, I have an equally unconventional approach to learning. Here are some of my steps to learning:

UNLEARNING

Everyone believes in something which they believe as the truth but it isn’t.

All of us are living in lies — lies that convince us that this is a fair world we are living in; lies that tell us that you reap what you sow; lies that say that goodness is inherently present in humans. People find comfort in the lies. The truth doesn’t matter as long as the lies make people feel good.

While growing up, I was imposed with numerous lies — nationalist lies like my country is the greatest in the world and I should be proud of it. I was taught religious lies that “God” is omnipresent and omnipotent. He watches us all the time and loves us. Sometimes he punishes us too. School told us historical lies like India’s freedom struggle led by Gandhi was the primary reason for India’s independence. The socialist economy told us economic lies that monopolies are always bad for the society. The conservative society lies about the sexual boundaries like polygamy and live-in relationships, and the patriarchal society lies that women should stay at home, cook food, and look after children. There are legal lies that label homosexuality as “unnatural” and marijuana as “harmful”.

The truth and lies are not black and white. There may not be an ultimate truth. But I believe finding your own truth rather than believing in someone else’s version of truth is more authentic learning. That’s why I think that unlearning is the most important and difficult step in the process of learning.

SKEPTICISM

Skepticism comes naturally in the process of unlearning. I no longer believe in ideas of my parents, religion, law, society, world leaders, business tycoons, and accomplished scientists just for the sake of their authority.

Many people very easily give in to popular or influential ideas. They think that since an idea originates from an authoritative source, it must be true. They don’t stop for a moment to analyze it with logic and rationality to find their own truth.

There is nothing great about reciting the plays of Shakespeare or rewriting Newton’s laws of motion. The greatness, however, lies in giving a new meaning to the plays of Shakespeare and to falsify Newton’s laws of motion in certain conditions.

When I can think beyond the existing boundaries of thoughts, I can even surpass those boundaries to discover something new!

ELASTICITY

While learning, skepticism and elasticity go hand in hand. Elasticity is a form of self-skepticism. When you are sceptical about others’ thoughts, you need to be sceptical about your thoughts as well. Although I don’t adopt others’ thoughts easily, I’m open to conflicting points of view.

It needs courage to accept that you are wrong and commit to a new set of ideas. I am a theist turned atheist turned sceptic. I am still open to change my beliefs. This doesn’t mean that I am fickle minded. This means that I am not clinging on to my ego. This means that I have the capability to think for myself rather than being imposed by the opinions of the society.

AVOIDING MANY BOOKS

I am going against the popular belief by avoiding extensive reading.

I used to be amazed by people who read extensively — some of them one book every day. Now I believe that they may read for entertainment or accumulating knowledge, but not for authentic learning. Don’t they feel the urge to stop for a moment to think of alternate scenarios? Don’t they have an internal tussle going on with the views of the author?

I think accumulating knowledge without thinking originally is like collecting wood without igniting them. It is insignificant and doesn’t serve any critical purpose.

I am following this approach (of not reading) in studying philosophy. I have mostly kept myself from reading works of any philosopher. From time to time, I do refer to some philosophical concepts, but I have mostly stayed away from someone’s personal take on a subject.

So I have come up with my own set of theories and philosophical models. Once a few people commented on one of my writings about the similarity of my thoughts with Ayn Rand. There are two positive sides to it. First, it was a great realisation that I was able to think in a way similar to a renowned author. Second, when I would read her works in future, I have the power to disagree with her and critique her theories. I wouldn’t have been able to do that as effectively if I derived my thoughts from her work. Her thoughts would have been imprinted on my clean-slate mind. If I ever addressed a related issue, I would have addressed it predominantly from Ayn Rand’s perspective, not mine.

It’s true that reading changes your thoughts and enables you to see things from a different perspective. But those thoughts may not be yours, and are certainly not new.

HIT AND TRIAL

When you are not reading extensively, how would you learn new things?

My high-school physics teacher would tell us, “I want you to do the problem yourself. I can teach you the concepts and tools necessary to solve the problem, but won’t solve the problem for you. If you can’t solve it, I want you to leave it, wake up next morning, and try it again. Keep doing this until you solve the problem. If you need to know more about the concept, you can come to me.”

He would solve the problem eventually, but not before ensuring that we had attempted to solve the problem 4–5 times.

Once he told us the reason behind this approach to teaching. He said, “I am teaching Physics for more than 15 years and I can solve any high-school physics problem. This is because I am well aware the procedure and approach to solving them. But once in a while, I come across a student who solves a problem is a much simpler way than I would have solved. I have a lot more knowledge about Physics than my students, yet some of them manage to outsmart me.”

He continued and explained how that happened. “When I already know the approach to solving a problem, my brain is in a relaxed state. It isn’t inquisitive. It doesn’t strive to find a better and easier method to solve that problem. But when my students start to solve a problem from scratch, s/he is unaware of any existing method. So there is a high chance that s/he solves it differently. Most of the times, the different method was not easier or better than the existing method. But those few methods which were rare were differences of glory!” #

I was immensely influenced by my physics teacher’s approach to teaching, and have been trying to implement that in my life ever since.

When I wanted to learn to solve Rubik’s cube, I didn’t watch a YouTube tutorial straightaway. I tried to solve it all by myself. After a week trying and being limited to solving only one face of the cube, I gave up. It’s true I didn’t innovate a new way of solving Rubik’s cube. But there is a high chance that if I would, I would have done it in this phase of my learning.

Innovation comes at two stages of your learning process — once when you don’t know the rules, and the other when you know the rules good enough to twist them.

I have changed my learning sequence from [Learn-Attempt-Fail-Succeed] to [Attempt-Fail-Learn-Attempt-Succeed].*

*Multiple iterations of sequence in italics.

# These are not my teacher’s actual words. Just a recreation from my memories.