Solitary Learners

Individual adults or children who learn only when they are alone are solitary learners. Learners who struggle to learn in groups prefer less sensory inputs from the external environment. Concentration is more easily achieved for them when external stimuli is restricted to the ones that are relevant to the subject being taught. Many learners can manage to learn despite extraneous stimuli. Many learn better only when there is a lot of stimuli. Both learn in groups. There is a misconception that students need to go to schools because social learning is equally important; learning to share, team work and learning to play sports that involve team games are seen as essential to building a wholesome personality. It is said that it helps students learn to live in a community which is necessary when they become adults. This notion is problematic. Although, there are students who say that they enjoy their school life, there are also those who abhor school life. Although, there are adults who say that they would want their childhood back, which was to them a treasure house of fond memories, there are those who say that their childhood was hard enough the first time. Having to relive them in memory is intensely painful. Why is this the case? 

Social learning is not relevant to learning academic subjects. Children have to treat one another with respect. If there is bullying in school then teachers have to correct them strongly. The students who are bullied are affected and their learning gets affected. This can affect their outlook towards society later on as the scars left behind do not go away easily. Social learning is anyway messed up. Teachers can make or break the world. The early seeds grow with life's experiences. This is why teachers have to also be mentors.

Working with adults involves a completely different outlook when compared to working with children. This comes with exposure anyway.

It can be said that the clamor for social learning in schools is overstated.

If a child learns under a tutor individually, then social learning is still possible. There are avenues where children can interact with other children through forums for the young ones to get together, playgrounds and interactions focused on general knowledge about the world and value based living.  

This is where tutors serve the purpose better as they can give individual attention more easily than teachers. What is needed is a tutor who ought to attend to only one student at a time. This can also compliment school education. Tutors and teachers need to stay abreast of their methodologies so that the child does not get confused as a possible consequence of different teaching styles.  They need to work together for that.

This facility and acceptance of solitary learners would help open the flood gates for them to bask in the activity of learning without a dull moment in their experience.

The stigma associated with solitary learners is ill founded. 

At any rate, learning takes place only at the individual level. Even students who study in groups, learn alone.

From Pebbles to Breakthroughs

We come across different students in a classroom. Some students demonstrate brilliant abilities to grasp but have difficulty thinking out of the box. Some have wonderful artistic skills and are very imaginative but do not do well in standardized tests. There are students who have very interesting ways of thinking but do not fit in the traditional classroom scenario. There is this difficulty among teachers as to how to handle and stimulate creativity and unorthodox thinking. Did you know that it is possible for imaginative people to do well in standardized tests as well? Teachers need to teach students how to use their strengths to crack exams. For long it was thought that as students have their unique strengths, they cannot do well in subjects that require other faculties which are perceived to be weaker. This is mistaken as there are umpteen examples of individuals learning to use their strengths successfully, even in areas where they have difficulties.

There are some strategies which can help teachers harness in students cross coordination of thinking. Cross coordination of thinking is about coordinating between the left and right hemispheres of the brain. This is difficult. For example; in Maths if a student uses imagination, the method of problem solving can be drastically different. The solution may be seen as a hunch and the student may have to work backwards from the solution to the problem. This approach is still perceived as counter intuitive as we rely on linear approaches, for the most part, in all walks of life. Similarly, in drawing if a student uses his logical faculty, he/she will bring about a completely different flavor to the art in consideration. Schools in the past discouraged this approach as it runs contrary to the systematic way of problem solving as prescribed in text books.
 This notion affected many students as they could not use their strengths to their advantage. The sharp boundary that separates the left brain and the right brain is often misunderstood. This has not been assessed accurately and research continues unabated. Irrespective of the dominance of thought-process, teachers can help students, master skills by guiding them along their lines of thinking. Instead of curbing unique approaches and perspectives, they need to develop them. Cross- coordination of thinking brings in the magic of originality-the one gift that money can’t buy.  

The Shadow of Darkness

Darkness indicates inadequate light. If I say the room is dark, you automatically infer that lighting is not adequate. But what makes you think that darkness is just inadequate light? When you read a book you need light but is it just any light or is it in particular natural sunlight? CFL light or a tube light does not emit the same kind of light that the sun does? Why is that the case? Let us try and think in terms of impact rather than go into the details of the nature of CFL and sunlight. At night you simply cannot read a book because it is ‘utterly’ dark. In the day time even if there is inadequate light you still can manage to read a book because the sunlight does penetrate your room even if it is ‘insufficient’. The words, ‘utterly’ and ‘insufficient’ indicate that there is a grave difference in degree or intensity. Can you now raise a question? What is the difference between the color ‘black’ and ‘darkness’? Black does not reflect any light. Darkness is the shadow of the object that blocks light. Darkness, light and object are intrinsically linked. Depending on the shape of the object you have a shadow that resembles the object exactly but the features are obscured. They are not eliminated. 

Can you lose your shadow? You can let your imagination free by imagining what would happen if you were to lose your shadow! Try and visualize it. You can lose your shadow if there is no light and if that is the case then you cannot see yourself or anything around you. A shadow has three parts to it; the umbra, penumbra and antumbra. You have the word ‘umbrella’. You can derive the word ‘umbrella’ logically from the three aspects of a shadow. It is essential to remember that they are aspects of a shadow because they depend on the angle of light and the object. They are not self sufficient. The object umbrella too can be constructed by observing the patterns of a shadow namely; umbra, penumbra and antumbra. Can you imagine a shadow without an object? You can because you can imagine shapes without colours and features. In imagination, shadows do not depend on objects but they do depend on your visual field which is your mind’s eye.

If an object can have a shadow why can’t darkness? The shadow of darkness spreads darkness. Without darkness you cannot find shelter. You stay indoors to escape the heat and the light. Too much light makes it impossible to see clearly. Darkness optimizes light. It taps the grey areas in your brain which is why you can perceive innumerable colors and combinations.

The dark is unclear and mysterious. It gives you ample scope to find out the treasure obscured by lack of light. Once you discover the opaque treasures of the dark, your mind opens up to natural wonders blocked only by predefined thresholds.
There is no need to remove darkness but the fear of darkness.

Welcome darkness and you welcome imagination!

The Child's Natural Order

Overemphasis on behaviour, attitude and social skills has curbed learning in schools. This is on the whole unfortunate as such traits hardly constitute knowledge about the physical world and what is worse is that they remove the child from his/her native self. They are more to do with behavioral dynamics than with the quest for knowledge. I refrain from referring to behavioral dynamics as personality, for a child new to the world must not be robbed of its innocence. Categorizing juvenile personality does precisely that. A child has to be nurtured no doubt and nurturing implies grooming. The blessings of etiquette and manners that gift our existence with meaning would do the same for every child if and only if they are received as gifts by them. If they do not go down well with them, I am afraid they would act as imprints curtailing potential for self awareness. 

We grow up with fixed notions about discipline, focus and activity. These traits are thought to be necessary for learning, as ‘sustenance’ is believed to be the key to its enterprise. The ones who drill these notions into our psyche would like us to swallow them and digest the essentials that some of us have naturally come to abhor. Why naturally? Discipline is not the child’s natural order. By presenting it through the medium of fear you are depriving the child of its benefit. You are not going to be able to make the young learner accept it without resistance. You are not going to be able to make the child see it as a quality that would aid in the pleasure of learning. How is the child supposed to be made to accept the notion in mind? One can be made to behave in a disciplined manner but to accept the necessity of discipline mentally is another matter altogether. It would be worthwhile to treat discipline on equal terms. We need to have a common conception of this misunderstood trait. Discipline as repetition does not help in exploring. Exploration is necessary for learning. Discipline as conviction goes a long way in exploring and finding out. Why not introduce it as soothing cream? Why look at discipline as a bitter pill to swallow? 

The necessity of discipline and concentration are drilled into our psyche. They then operate as static ideals that serve to define studious diligence. A child who conforms to these devices finds favor with the system and thereby earns good will. A child who does not conform to such a dictate is condemned to ‘stand outside’ the class where the identity of an outsider is discovered. The morale of the shunned sets in and what follows is creeping dismay that haunts what should be the wonder years of the child.

Adults have the benefit of experience which children do not. It cannot be seen as ‘lack’ for we need to encourage them to look forward to it. To spell the hours every day is to amount to monotony but to live every day with zest is to internalize change which is learning from experience. When a teacher knows that children do not have experience, it ought to dawn upon the teacher to eliminate ‘fear’. Fear acts as an association thereby extinguishing participation in the learning experience. If the teacher resorts to fear as a tool then he/she is incapacitated by limitation. 

Students need privacy while learning. This need for privacy is innate to students. There are many occasions where they would like to learn by trial and error; sometimes on whim as well. The teacher carries a baggage of ideas, background and attitudes that may impede the student’s natural course of learning. The major ones are attitudes about the child’s psychology. A teacher tends to think that a studious child makes for a focused learner. Enforced focus amounts to suffocation. Focus can only be a natural choice for the student. The student focuses effortlessly on a subject when the attention is captured by the excitement it provokes. Enforcing focus would imply a limitation on the part of the teacher. The student does not need to focus all the time. A sparrow by the window is a welcome distraction and a little diversion goes a long way in refreshing innocent minds. A child gets to use all the senses to learn and this would be holistic wouldn’t it? Such a learner is said to be a multimodal learner.

A teacher can explain concepts through different media; visual, auditory and kinesthetic. This is an effective way of teaching multimodal learners.

Another point worth noting is that a student may see patterns across subjects. He/she may not want to study subjects in water tight compartments. A simile such as, “as solid as a rock” may remind a student of a chapter in rocks and minerals in Chemistry. The mind wanders and drifts away to a place where differences in form are unseen. This learning style calls for appreciation. It may seem like hyperactivity, but judgement clouds beauty. Why judge? Why restrict thought to form? A restriction of this kind can curb the child’s appreciation for a subject. The broader the creative range, the greater the appreciation. 

Hyperactivity can make a child adept at multitasking and a focused child can make an assiduous specialist. We may find the same learner hyperactive and focused at different points in time in different tasks and sometimes in the same task as well. They are natural variations in a learner. A natural learner follows the path of instinct and when left to do so obtains the rainbow effect of awareness. The contours of knowledge are colored by awareness.  Give in to the dance of hyperactivity and tune in to the poise of focus!

Learning As An Incentive In Itself

The method of rewarding and deterring is usually applied to control the behaviour of the class. When it comes to learning it is of remote relevance. Learning by competition has disadvantages that are usually felt after the intellect develops beyond a point of instructive obedience. Instructive obedience is the habit of following instructions religiously. The limitations of this approach are that when individual thinking has to be exercised there will be grave difficulty. Individuality is needed when you have to point out your observations of a concept which are different from your tutors. If your observations are unique to you and you are able to perceive features differently then you have to point them out. To do this you need to learn and think for yourself without resorting to incentives that have only psychological importance.

In fact as you learn more and more the practice of incentives and deterrents are obstacles to your thinking process. This is a positive sign as it means that you are evolving as a learner. Think just how grand geometric concepts are. Thinking is largely individualistic because you are interacting with the subject through an inner dialogue. In fact the psychological concepts of id, ego and super ego assume neutral entities when you are involved in a dialogue of this nature with yourself. This dialogue takes you beyond the confines of instructive obedience so that you arrive at the thought process and the solution yourself. There is nothing more joyful than a solution whose time has come. The time is created by your thought process which when ripe is able to fill in the pieces.

Looking at learning as an incentive in itself seems implausible for children. It cannot be understood as the faculties need to be sharp enough to realize this nature of true learning. In fact when you learn automatically you are involved and you generally do not forget what you have learnt. Whereas when you study just to get through assignments and exams you are more likely to have difficulty in retrieving information later on; the reason being that you have not identified yourself with the subject. Your teacher should as far as possible be an enabler and too much insistence on rigidity of approach will only prove to be an impediment. Competing for scores does not guarantee results. It does not even mean that you will learn genuinely and remember to get value for what you have learnt. Learning as an incentive in itself is the quintessence of evolution.

How to Unlearn and Relearn Effectively

Learning is in a restricted sense associated with the ability to register concepts or information in memory. Although this is not a definition of learning it is the means of monitoring what we have learnt. Even application depends on memory. But this does not mean that memorizing information indicates that we have learnt something. In many subjects where logic is the guiding principle behind mastering them, memory is only needed to register principles. Learners may also study a subject the wrong way. If the subject is not given due attention either by the teacher or the student there are many mistakes we may continue to make and eventually we do not learn properly. Later when we realize this it becomes necessary to unlearn and relearn. 


It is generally difficult to correct our memory errors on our own. Memory monitoring cannot be done without delving into the fundamentals and finding out where we need to avert mistakes. Mistaken associations are a challenge to correct but we need to do that in order to acquire the correct association. This difficulty in learning new information because of existing information is called ‘proactive interference'. Some people have difficulty for instance to relearn swimming because it has become their second nature to swim with flaws. How do we correct this phenomenon? It is said that the prefrontal cortex needs to function properly to monitor one's memory. Children may have this difficulty because the faculty to monitor memory is not developed. But this error in information association can be corrected by consistent correction. This consistent correction is what we tend to loosely call ‘revision'.

Learning to make new associations helps in correcting mistakes because the trigger is altered and then you remember this new trigger which reminds you of the corrected information. You need to create a new trigger to retrieve the information/principle from your memory. For instance you can convert 5 x 3 into 5 x (1+2) = 5 + 10 = 15. With this new association the direct and shorter association 5 x 3 = 15 replaces the previous association. The previous triggers weaken without reinforcement. This way you can correct mistaken associations by not only reinforcing the new ones but also altering the triggers. Many learners face this need to unlearn and relearn because of the pressures of instant learning.  By reviewing your associations in the past you get to unlearn a mistaken association and relearn concepts afresh correctly.

Idleness Takes Effort

In the face of transactional virtue, idleness is held in contempt and effort greeted with applause. A judgement borne out of transactional virtue is no virtue at all. You may have goals of your own or none at all. You may simply pursue process-happiness. Monetary value can never be criteria for working. Any occupation that is taken up whether or not it yields results is work regardless of the popular standards of 'utilitarianism'. This is the difference between work as evaluated from the viewpoint of economic productivity and work as a law of nature. Work as a law of nature falls in line with Physics.  

'Work' is described in Physics as the net impact of a force on a 'point' that moves through a 'distance'. The movement of the point follows a curve x, with a velocity v at each instant. The 'net impact' is a 'result'. The word 'point' has a variant meaning in Physics. It has a general application which means that it is valid in any situation. 'Point' is subjective and it is decided entirely by the agent that applies force. It moves through a distance which means that the agent is not static. Curve 'x' is without context; arbitrary and non-specific. It can represent a 'direction' that the agent intends to take. It may be seen as directionless by a non-entity outside the subjective context of the agent. A non-entity is someone who fails to understand the context and as a corollary passes a verdict that the effort is in vain. Just because its road does not bend to a popular notion of 'result', the destination of the enterprise is never pointless.

You may pursue 'embroidery' for the joy that the craft gifts you. Does it have to lead to business for it to be entitled to the label of 'work'? -Not at all. You enjoy it as an agent and it is your occupation. You are said to be working for pleasure. Whether work is done for a living, for pleasure or for neither it is work all the same. The definition of work in Physics covers terrains beyond the scope of our standards. If you move to pick up a remote control, you are said to be working even if your parents deny it.

Idleness in the context of Physics is static wherein there is absolutely no movement. The agent is at rest. 'Idleness' as condemned by human beings is merely human convention. The net impact can be felt only by the agent and other agents to whom their work has value.

Physics reminds us that even 'idleness' takes effort.