Hahaha. Well, to be clear, we’re not sure it’s NOT true—and if assuming it has had good results for many educators, it seems more likely than not that there’s at least some grain of truth to it—it’s just that it hasn’t been tested properly yet. :)
My expectation is that any theory that encourages educators to pay attention to individual nonhierarchical differences among their students will have good results relative to any theory that encourages educators to treat all students either as identical or as stratified, simply because teaching is a social relationship among humans and social relationships tend to benefit from mutual respectful attention.
So I’m reluctant to choose one theory over another solely on that basis.
Hear, hear. The difficulty of that is not to be underestimated, though. I had a teacher once that I liked a lot—I found his explanations really clear and interesting, and he was a funny and nice and interesting person himself. Chatting with some of his other students outside the classroom, I found that everyone I talked to said something along the lines of, “I feel like he teaches in just the right way for me to understand.” So either he’d found the magic teaching style that works for everybody, or he was simply giving us the same information in several different ways throughout the class, and each of us only remembered the one that worked. It was pretty cool, and I have tons of respect for that guy.
(For what it’s worth, what I remember best about his classes was how visual and hands-on they were, despite being about relatively abstract topics. For example, when we were learning about ext2 filesystems, he put pieces of paper with file, directory, or inode contents on the various desks, and had us scurry around tracking down specific information in files—basically, learning how to be a shell! Or, similarly, when discussing standard i/o filehandles, he held up a physical box with one wire going in and two wires going out. It didn’t matter that the box itself wasn’t actually doing anything; seeing it made the metaphor crystal clear.)
In my experience it does seem to be true. In Aikido class, some people did seem to pick up things easier from seeing, others from hearing, etc. One thing I noticed was that my brain doesn’t really get ‘left’ and ‘right’ - ‘same side’ and ‘other side’ make much more sense. Don’t people who learn things in ‘left and right’ have to learn every technique twice, once for each side? (Strangely enough, it appears they don’t!)
But learning things better one way doesn’t mean other ways are useless. All ways reinforce each other, and now that I’m learning Alexander technique I notice that sometimes I get a ‘click’ from spoken directions, other times from touch, etc. If you’re a teacher, you should probably use as many modes as possible.
One thing I noticed was that my brain doesn’t really get ‘left’ and ‘right’ - ‘same side’ and ‘other side’ make much more sense.
This reminds me of a story from a friend who works in a bike shop. A customer came in to buy some pedals, and asked of the two employees (my friend and her coworker) who were standing nearby, “Do I need to screw one of them in differently when I install them?”
Speaking at the same time, one employee said, “Yes, both of them screw in forwards” and the other said “Yes, the thread on the left pedal is reversed.” The customer’s eyes glazed over and one of them quickly picked a single way to explain in more detail. The point was that, given three accurate mnemonics for the same thing, you gotta just pick the one that makes sense to you.
I hadn’t heard of the Alexander technique before and just looked it up. That seems really interesting. How are you finding it?
Speaking at the same time, one employee said, “Yes, both of them screw in forwards” and the other said “Yes, the thread on the left pedal is reversed.” The customer’s eyes glazed over and one of them quickly picked a single way to explain in more detail.
Bonus points if they described the concept of chirality. Who knows, maybe the customer will need to learn organic chem some day!
Sorry for the late reply, but I only just noticed the little red envelope. :( I’m coming up on my last Alexander lesson in a few days, and I really like it. It’s not (yet) been as life-changing as I’d hoped (I still have bad knees (sigh), and people don’t suddenly react very differently to me), but it has improved my posture a lot, and I’m very happy with that. At the very least, it’ll help me not get RSI or back problems.
Hahaha. Well, to be clear, we’re not sure it’s NOT true—and if assuming it has had good results for many educators, it seems more likely than not that there’s at least some grain of truth to it—it’s just that it hasn’t been tested properly yet. :)
My expectation is that any theory that encourages educators to pay attention to individual nonhierarchical differences among their students will have good results relative to any theory that encourages educators to treat all students either as identical or as stratified, simply because teaching is a social relationship among humans and social relationships tend to benefit from mutual respectful attention.
So I’m reluctant to choose one theory over another solely on that basis.
Hear, hear. The difficulty of that is not to be underestimated, though. I had a teacher once that I liked a lot—I found his explanations really clear and interesting, and he was a funny and nice and interesting person himself. Chatting with some of his other students outside the classroom, I found that everyone I talked to said something along the lines of, “I feel like he teaches in just the right way for me to understand.” So either he’d found the magic teaching style that works for everybody, or he was simply giving us the same information in several different ways throughout the class, and each of us only remembered the one that worked. It was pretty cool, and I have tons of respect for that guy.
(For what it’s worth, what I remember best about his classes was how visual and hands-on they were, despite being about relatively abstract topics. For example, when we were learning about ext2 filesystems, he put pieces of paper with file, directory, or inode contents on the various desks, and had us scurry around tracking down specific information in files—basically, learning how to be a shell! Or, similarly, when discussing standard i/o filehandles, he held up a physical box with one wire going in and two wires going out. It didn’t matter that the box itself wasn’t actually doing anything; seeing it made the metaphor crystal clear.)
In my experience it does seem to be true. In Aikido class, some people did seem to pick up things easier from seeing, others from hearing, etc. One thing I noticed was that my brain doesn’t really get ‘left’ and ‘right’ - ‘same side’ and ‘other side’ make much more sense. Don’t people who learn things in ‘left and right’ have to learn every technique twice, once for each side? (Strangely enough, it appears they don’t!)
But learning things better one way doesn’t mean other ways are useless. All ways reinforce each other, and now that I’m learning Alexander technique I notice that sometimes I get a ‘click’ from spoken directions, other times from touch, etc. If you’re a teacher, you should probably use as many modes as possible.
This reminds me of a story from a friend who works in a bike shop. A customer came in to buy some pedals, and asked of the two employees (my friend and her coworker) who were standing nearby, “Do I need to screw one of them in differently when I install them?”
Speaking at the same time, one employee said, “Yes, both of them screw in forwards” and the other said “Yes, the thread on the left pedal is reversed.” The customer’s eyes glazed over and one of them quickly picked a single way to explain in more detail. The point was that, given three accurate mnemonics for the same thing, you gotta just pick the one that makes sense to you.
I hadn’t heard of the Alexander technique before and just looked it up. That seems really interesting. How are you finding it?
Bonus points if they described the concept of chirality. Who knows, maybe the customer will need to learn organic chem some day!
Sorry for the late reply, but I only just noticed the little red envelope. :( I’m coming up on my last Alexander lesson in a few days, and I really like it. It’s not (yet) been as life-changing as I’d hoped (I still have bad knees (sigh), and people don’t suddenly react very differently to me), but it has improved my posture a lot, and I’m very happy with that. At the very least, it’ll help me not get RSI or back problems.
I only just noticed this reply, so we’re even. ;) Thanks.