There’s an old White House story about how people learn.
President John F. Kennedy was a reader. He liked staff reports and so his Cabinet and staff members soon learned the importance of carefully crafted reports and decision-papers.
After President Kennedy was assassinated and Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson became president, there was little change in the White House staff. The written reports continued to flow upwards.
A problem quickly emerged. LBJ preferred conversations to reading. He liked face-to-face communication and since it could swing from persuasive to threatening, the staff may have longed for the Kennedy approach.
But, of course, the staff eventually adjusted to the new style.
If you operate within a system that doesn’t fit your communication style, it’s like having a pebble in your shoe. Something doesn’t feel right.
If you are using an approach that inhibits your ability to learn, however, you may be seriously harming yourself.
One might think that the subject of how we learn would be taught in elementary and high schools, but most people acquire that skill in a very haphazard manner.
You may have encountered the 1940 classic How to Read a Book by Mortimer Adler and Charles Van Doren. The authors dissect various types of reading and stress that a one-size-fits-all approach doesn’t work. Serious problems can arise when you’re using entertainment-level reading skills on material which you are seeking to master.
Adler and Van Doren would have much to say about our current reading levels.
If I were to pick a general guideline for adult learners, however, I’d go with the maxim: “If you want to learn a subject, teach the subject.”
Consider a basic example and pretend that you’re describing the subject to a friend over a cup of coffee. Consider how you would strive to make the key points as understandable and as memorable as possible.
A good guideline is memorably shown in the great film Margin Call. It’s the middle of the night. Wall Street investment firm Chief Executive Officer John Tuld - played by Jeremy Irons – is meeting with his top staff to discuss a major emergency that was just revealed in a report by a young risk assessment analyst.
When Tuld learns that the author of the alarming report is present, he asks that young man to explain it to him “as you might to a young child or a golden retriever.”
A great line, of course, because it resembles what many of us want in a crisis: no jargon, no assumption of knowledge, and a focus on the key issue.
And when the young analyst gives his response, he is teaching the Chief Executive Officer and everyone else in the room about the nature of the problem.
Years ago, while he was in law school, Dov Seidman was a “teaching fellow” in an extraordinary class for Harvard undergraduates. The class was called “Thinking about Thinking”, and it was taught by Alan Dershowitz, Stephen J. Gould, and Robert Nozick.
[I get envious just reading those names.]
The overall subject involved a cross-disciplinary analysis of controversial topics such as abortion, gun rights, and drugs.
While examining how the students performed, Seidman noticed that there was “something surprising about who earned Bs and B+s, who earned the As, and, most interestingly, who earned the Cs.”
He found that the B students acquired a basic understanding of the material and pretty much stayed there. The A students acquired a basic B-level understanding then slid down into what he called the “Valley of Confusion” where various complexities dwelled.
A key point: The A students eventually worked through the Valley to achieve mastery of the material. As he put it, the A students got to the point where they were “in some respects teaching it…”
Teaching it. Hmm.
He was surprised to find that “a good number” of the C students were “every bit as industrious as those who got As.” But unlike the B students who stopped at the basic understanding level, the C students – like their A counterparts – entered the Valley of Confusion.
The problem was - unlike the A students – they remained there. They’d gone further into the subject than the B students but got into a confusing realm which made it difficult for them to express and explain their knowledge.
Seidman concluded that the Valley of Confusion was an important and unavoidable stage in achieving mastery. The only thing wrong was to remain there. He concluded that power is not so much a power over something as it is a power through something.
It wasn’t that the C students weren’t studying hard enough. That was usually not the case. What they needed was guidance on how to get through the Valley of Confusion so they could join the A students on the other side.
And what did the A students achieve? Once out of the Valley, they gained the ability to teach someone about the class.
Which makes me wonder if that ability was sought by the A students from the beginning. They weren’t there just to learn the subject. They began, I suspect, with the goal of being able to explain or teach the subject, however informally.
They sought to clarify and simplify.
A key test in our ability to learn a subject is to be able to emerge from the ultra-confusing stage and be able to express our knowledge in plain language.
As much as possible, we need to strive to explain the subject as if we were describing it to a friend over a cup of coffee.
Or, to put it another way, as if we’re talking to a young child or a golden retriever.
Recommended Reading:
Mortimer Adler and Charles Van Doren, How to Read a Book. [New York: Simon & Schuster Touchstone, revised in 1972.]
Peter F. Drucker, The Effective Executive: The Definitive Guide to Getting Things Done. [New York: HarperCollins, revised in 2009.]
Dov Seidman, HOW: Why HOW We Do Anything Means Everything. [New York: John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 2011.]
Note: My novel - Pilate’s Magician - is on sale at Amazon.