April 2, 2009
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Pushed… or Pointed?
This Sunday, jillcarmel left a comment here that set me thinking about learning modes or styles. The word I want here is probably “mode,” and not “style.” Learning style is a common concept, concerned with whether a person tends to be verbal, visual, auditory, participatory, etc. “Mode” might also have an established meaning other than what I mean. Maybe I’ll have to explain what I mean, then someone might be able to tell me a word for it.
The comment that launched this train of thought came at the end of this exchange:
She asked, regarding the research I was doing for my essay on Human Sacrifice, Cannibalism, and Hallucinogenic Snuff:
“why are you researching that?”I replied:
“Learning… putting together pieces, uncovering facts. It’s a reason to live.“To which she responded:
“yes, I think so too but like the rest of us we have to be pushed into it.“I have never had to be pushed into investigating mysteries and learning new things. I think I was born with an abhorrence of “black boxes.” Just point me at one, and I’ll try to get at its insides.
What about you? Do you have to be pushed into learning, or just be pointed toward something to learn?
Comments (16)
I think there’s something to be learned everyday. Everyday is a new experience. I might have to be pushed into learning Algebra….but other things that interest me….I’m a willing student.
@PrincessFiveandDime - Good point. The last time I had to be not “pushed” but pulled into learning something, it was familiarizing myself with the buttons, switches and menus of my new digital camera. Without the payoff of being able to use the damned thing as the “carrot”, I would not have been willing to spend the time. I haven’t really been pushed into learning since I quit school in tenth grade, and even in school there was little that I resisted studying. Mostly, I just hated having to sit in school because I could have been at home or in the library, learning. I loved algebra, especially since my teacher was such an idiot that I got to point out the errors in his equations.
jillcarmel sounds, well, pathetic is the word that sprang to mind. That, and ignorant and unevolved for assuming everyone is like her. Learning new stuff is a great pleasure and privilege.
Granted, having to ingest facts for the purpose of getting a degree or something can be disagreeable–but one should never let formal schooling interfere with one’s education.
Curiosity often points me in the right direction to learn, and often directs me to research a topic. I don’t necessarily then write about what I have learned, although writing is a part of my learning style.
Definitely pointed, as pushing makes me push back, sometimes purely on principle.
for me learning must be something relative to what’s currently high on my interest spectrum…
I would have to be pushed into learning math, let’s say… or anything I find unnecessary, annoying or have zero interest in. However… I’ve never had to be pushed to learn about something that catches my fancy. I actually tend to be rather obsessive when I develop an interest in something.
I am with you on this matter. However, how I came to it was very different. Perhaps life pushed me in several ways. First, my family was a bit counter-intuitive or at least not as socially adaptive and “out there” in a good way. Most of my childhood I was “out there” in a bad way because the mass group of people around me were the ones to make known that I had too many “foreign” behaviours to be right. Kind of the ole “be cool or be cast out” syndrome of the Tennessee mindset of homogenaity for anything not like us, is baaaaad. I was given a mark of around 172 in the second grade and at that time, I was already a broken souled donkey that intelligence did not matter like it should have…I could do things and often I would be beaten, made fun of or mocked and called a liar by my classmates as how could I know such things, I ain’t no smarter than they are.
Lots of therapy and adaptation and removing so many masks that I believed I was myself, it is a different plateau now. Everything is a delight and in the breadth of one life, most people that I have met consider action to be an ends to a means of getting more money, more status or accomplishing something in a very overt way as to raise one’s position in society. I have no argument or love for society on the whole, but I love everything that makes it tick. How everything binds, follows and becomes what it is especially with mass consciousness. But to look at what is under the rocks I am stepping on is beyond fascination, I have to turn it over and ask myself what is it that I am looking at? I used to hate learning. I used to hate performing because I also did not know what to do when people praised me for being “brilliant”..I don’t like that word still..yet, part of me does like to stand in front of others and play, sing and actually try to work something in the sense of “feeling the crowd” that would make them laugh, make them cry and leave them in awe, not of me per se, but of the message and how I delivered it straight between the eyes. Since 1993, I have not done much at all and for all intents and purposes, what ever was broken in me seperated completely for a time then but I just had to keep walking a trail…the only artifact I have from that life is one viola, the only musical instrument my mother and father bought me and when they did, I knew how much of a financial sacrifice it was at the time to do so…on top of that, I got lessons from a woman who was beyond patient…I was not able to truly thank her at the time as I know I was a dissappointment to most of my teachers back then when they knew what I was capable of and yet how far I was from moving that way. A mule can be moved by a brick. In some ways, life has caused me to react in such a way that I got more beat down before I finally just got my harmony back…that, has been still a rather recent event for me of which like someone who is a recovering alcoholic staring at a full bottle of vodka each day licking the lips, I still question my own temerity in the face of a long history of bad behavioral habitudes I came to know and believe I was. But, just uncovering “that” alone has been something so sweet, the pursuit of remembering myself has been the best learning of all.
I think the way you come to learning is two fold….for some people….I always liked school as a source of information…some poeple need a push in order to understand the benefit…as they don’t see the point…others like me are constantly looking for ways to keep our minds active and engaged…I do a lot of reading ….and then asking questions of people I feel are knowledgeable on the subject to confirm what I have read and in certain situations…like gardening I then try out the info and come to my own conclusion….some people basically stick to step 3 and are educated….to them the first 2 steps are being pushed into to learning…
I’m a bit obsessive. When I get interested in something I have to find out everything I possibly can about it until something that interests me more comes along and then I repeat the process. I’m an information junkie.
well…personally for me…i have to find some sort of interest to pull me into it…but i also know a number of people that “have to be pushed into it” …. i don’t particularly find jillcarmel a pathetic person…she is just the norm …what i do find pathetic is that society as a whole think the only way to learn is their way…. i loved learning in school… but i also know our school system is pretty bad … and from my experiences it can be something that can turn a person away from the desire of learning.
it has been said…”knowledge is power. arm yourself.”
i have always been a sink for information, i like to absorb and be absorbed in ‘new stuff”. somewhat like a sponge to information. the problem falls when it comes to access, i am (perhaps not quite) full of information, the downside is using it…i have a faulty filing system, the knowledge is there, it just takes someone else to trigger its release.
i’ve been told i’m an aural learner because i look, then turn my head to the side when i’m trying to recall something in particular…but i don’t restrict myself to any one type. i will read voraciously on the subject which has caught my interest, i watch people and things, some things are best learnt by doing, others by practice. something that i have never really understood was behaviour and society and this is my downfall.
I have been accused of reading labels in the grocery store when I couldn’t get my hands on something to explore. As for mode or style, I would say exploring is engrained in you and you would like to enlighten Jill. How does that sound?
no i have always been “too curious for me own good.” i think it is called driven now. Wish i could read better…:(
@the_nthian - I’m very aural, too. When I read, I hear the words inside my head, which slows my reading speed. I’d be clairvoyant, except that my flashes are almost always sounds or words, not pictures. I, too, could use a better “filing system.” There are a lot of associations — such as A has relation B to C — that I know I know, and cannot retrieve from the A end, but always from the C end. I’m always asking my family, “Who is that guy who did this about or to that?” As soon as somebody says his name, I know what it was he did and to what or whom, but I could go the rest of my life without recalling his name from the initial clue.
@Sojourner_here - Naah. I’m generally content to leave people as they are unless they get in my face with their ignorance. I think ArmsMerchant would like to enlighten Jill, but I couldn’t care less about how she thinks or doesn’t bother to think, under the circumstances. Usually, around here, I ignore her habitually inane comments.
Curiosity is an attribute of intelligence, one of the traits generally shared by people who score high on IQ tests. If Jill was a powerful or influential person, I might be concerned about what damage a mindless twit might do with such clout, but her circle of influence probably doesn’t have great impact in the Cosmic scheme of things.
@Ikwa - Did you ever hear of the “patterning” treatment for dyslexia? A long time ago, several decades, researchers found that many kids with dyslexia had either been kept in cribs or playpens during the phase when most babies crawl, or they had gone directly to cruising by holding furniture and skipped the crawling phase. They had adults and older children get down and crawl, and it improved the dyslexic symptoms. I tried it, and it helped me quite a bit.
@SuSu - I should crawl?