Connections
Dec 12, 01:24 PM by Eric Allen
I have spent a lot of time thinking about how school could be done differently. Peninsula worked amazingly well for me, but I saw a lot of my peers struggle through classes in high school. Teaching everything only once or twice works for those of us who learn quickly, but the others are left behind. Crystal is much closer to the conventional model of spiral, repetitive learning. I’ve spent two and a half years here and I’m getting tired of it. As one of my Freshman year teachers put it, “you’ll be lucky if you remember what subject I taught.” If you seriously don’t expect us to remember everything, then why are you teaching it to us?
Real learning is based on connections between ideas. The way we remember information is by connecting it to other information. The more connections you make, the more embedded in your long-term memory the information is. We are not adapted to memorize long lists of facts. We can do it, but we’re much better at learning through connections. When presented with a huge amount of information, the central topics connect to a multitude of other small facets. After cramming all of this into our heads for a test, we begin to lose what we learned. However, it’s the little details that go first. They are only connected to one or two other ideas, so they get lost in the constant housecleaning inside our heads. The central ideas are so connected that they survive for some time, maybe even into next year.
Is there an alternative? I say there is. Instead of giving us so many irrelevant details in an effort to force the central concepts into our heads, give us connections. Give up on the details you know we won’t remember and give us connections we will. Spend the first 10 minutes with a conventional lecture. Then spend another 10 minutes connecting this fact into the larger fabric of our education (I’m not saying this is easy). After you’ve given us some connections, ask us for our own connections. Instead of “does anybody know the answer?” ask “does this connect to anybody’s life?” I try hard to make connections to school when I’m talking about politics and stuff with my friends & parents, but make everybody do it, and make us do it in class. I’m convinced this method will be more effective, more efficient, and more fun.
