This article, by Learning People Director Richard Whitehead, was first published in The Green Parent magazine (Oct/Nov 2008), www.thegreenparent.co.uk
A couple of years ago I was giving a workshop to a group of 34
educational professionals and let slip the idea that concentration gets in the
way of learning.
The reaction was one of universal surprise – “What, concentration is
harmful? But surely, learning is – has to be – all about concentration?”
I thought that the best way to illustrate my point would be through an
interactive exercise, and therefore set the group a task.
Their task was to attempt to levitate their glass of water off the table
through sheer force of mental effort. As
the group got going with the task, the room went very quiet and the huge amount
of concentration being exerted was visible on everyone’s face.
As this was going on, I proceeded to take off my jacket, turn it inside
out and put it on again, with the lining on the outside, in full view of the
entire room.
Out of 34 people present, only three noticed.
Mining our Minds
Concentration gets in the way of learning. It narrows your focus down into a small
tunnel, to the exclusion of everything else.
It is no surprise that 31 glass-levitating teachers should fail to
notice their workshop presenter turn his jacket inside out. Nor is it surprising that a child squeezing
every last ounce of mental effort into reading a sentence should be left
without the faintest idea what the sentence was about.
At its root, green philosophy is about the application of human
ingenuity to the accomplishment of a task with minimal expenditure of energy,
and in a manner which is in harmony with surrounding natural processes.
Frequently, it is about having the courage and insight to track a
problem back to its root cause. This is
because dealing with the reason why a problem has occurred is more efficient in
the long term than merely trying to block, contain, or combat the symptoms that
the problem has brought forth.
In the field of medicine, this philosophy resonates with many holistic
approaches which apply these exact same principles in the ecology of the human
body. Rather than combating external
symptoms, holistic medicine attempts to track back to the reason why the
illness came about. In an attitude of
profound respect for the human body’s own healing power, it then applies a
minimal, gentle force to the root cause, enabling sometimes dramatic recovery
from severe ill-health.
To date, however, little attention has been paid to the application of
the self-same principles in the field of learning. We mine and plunder the minds of our
children, teaching them that learning can only come at the expense of hard
work. We set them one-dimensional,
linear tasks that make little use of creative expression and lateral
thinking. We tell them to concentrate on
these tasks; and when our most creative and spontaneous thinkers find
themselves unable to comply, we ply them with repetitive exercises and
mind-bending drugs such as Ritalin and Strattera – out of the best intentions,
because we have nothing better to offer them.
Dyslexia – A Gift Going to Waste
My organisation has the experience of working and communicating with
hundreds of dyslexic children and adults.
Without exception, our
dyslexic clients display one or more – often several – of the following traits:
- Strong sense
of justice
- Strong
curiosity about one or more subject areas and/or their environment
- Strong
intuitive ability
- Vivid visual
imagination and/or spatial awareness (e.g.
good at tracking a football across a pitch)
- Unusually
high speed of thinking (to the point that some express irritation at the
slow pace at which others think)
- Practical or
entrepreneurial skill
- Skill in art,
design, engineering, architecture, sports and/or the performing arts
Dyslexia is not a lifelong disability, but a form of intelligence that
deserves to be treated with dignity and respect. Time and time again we watch our clients,
children and adults alike, utilising their natural strengths and talents to
build new skills in a matter of days that they had spent years vainly
struggling to acquire. This in turn
revitalises their self-esteem, allowing them to tackle and achieve things they
never thought possible. Among our
clients we have documented cases of reading ages leapfrogging biological age,
of huge surges in mathematical performance, of handwriting being transformed
after one afternoon session. This is not
because we have some magic wand. It is
because when properly stimulated, dyslexics have it within themselves to
succeed.
Just as green principles can guide us into global harmony and good
health, so they can enable a person to master anything they wish to learn.
What do green principles teach us, and how can we apply them to a
learning problem?
Respect for the environment A person’s mental environment is their thinking
style and natural strengths. A
visual-spatial thinker will learn well visually, an intuitive thinker
intuitively, and so on. Invariably,
learning problems are about a mismatch between a person’s thinking style and
the way that information has been presented.
Avoid: drill-based,
repetitive tasks – if something hasn’t worked the first time, it is the
approach, not the person, that needs to be modified.
Adopt: an explorative
approach to the problem; become genuinely curious about how your dyslexic student
thinks; find out where the mismatch was and invest time in developing an
approach that harnesses your student’s natural talents.
Energy efficiency Learning should always occur in a relaxed state of focus. If something doesn’t come easily and effortlessly,
it will not go into the long-term memory.
Avoid: concentration,
excessive timetabling of learning, and a culture of “try harder”.
Value: relaxation
techniques, creative games, taking an immediate break at the first sign of
concentration.
Sustainable energy
sources Learning is fuelled by the
curiosity of the person learning.
Personal curiosity, unless suppressed, is infinitely sustainable and
therefore a renewable energy source.
Avoid: teaching someone
something against their will; this is a fundamental violation of a learning
partnership.
Value: working to your
student’s personal learning agenda; giving explanations through metaphors that
your student can relate to; being excited by the learning material yourself
(enthusiasm is infectious).
Going to the root cause The root cause of a learning problem is
confusion. The key to resolving it is
finding out where and how the feeling of confusion entered the area of learning
in question; then devising an experience that replaces the feeling of confusion
with the feeling of certainty.
Avoid: Coping strategies,
learning “tricks” and memorisation – these might include the alphabet song for
a person who cannot visualise letters, and memorising times tables without an
underlying understanding of what multiplication is.
Read: “The Gift of
Dyslexia” and “The Gift of Learning” by Ronald Davis for a systematic approach
to creating a state of relaxed focus and identifying and resolving confusion in
learning.
Richard Whitehead is Director of The Learning People, a nationwide
community of Davis Dyslexia Programme Providers. The Davis Dyslexia Programme is an approach
which works with the dyslexic thinking style to overcome difficulties with
literacy, numeracy, handwriting, coordination and ADD. After the main programme, teachers and
parents are frequently involved in a supporting role. Go to www.learningpeople.co.uk
for more information or telephone 08000 27 26 57 for a free telephone
consultation.
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