 In this chapter, I'm going to describe the basic principles of learning. I'm not talking about specific methods, yet - you'll find that in chapter five. First of all, you need to be aware of what these basic principles are. If one or several of these principles are missing from your learning experience, it won't go as well, and you may draw the wrong conclusion that there's something wrong with you, with your mind, with your brain. But that's not the problem. If you respect these principles, you'll find that you will learn more quickly and easily than you did before. And when you read about specific methods in the following chapter, you'll find that these principles are respected by any method that works. Repetition The first one is the principle of repetition. If you're exposed to anything long enough, you'll end up learning it. That's how children learn their native language and all the myriad of other things that they learn before they even start school. The problem in school is that the teachers often have so much in their program that they have to teach to the children that they don't feel that they can take the time to repeat often enough for the children to learn. So what they do is, they give homework. Now homework is not the most popular thing, but its purpose is to review and repeat what was learned in school so that it will sink in. But a lot of kids just hate doing homework, but I wonder how many of them have had someone take the time to explain to them the purpose of homework and the need for repetition. Because of this principle, if you want to learn something, you'd be better off taking numerous short sessions rather than one or two long sessions to learn something. It's much more effective, and will actually save time in the long run. So let's say that you want to learn a list of terms - vocabulary, anatomical terms that you need for a science class - it could be anything. Write what you need to learn on a piece of paper, and then put it down and then go do something else. An hour or two later, take the paper out of your pocket and read it again. And then go do something else. Do this several times or whenever you think of it during the day. This will only take a few minutes at most each time. At the end of the day, test yourself. You may be surprised to see how much you have learned with practically no effort at all. Association The second principle is the principle of association. What makes our brains so incredibly powerful is that they have an uncountable number of cells that do not operate alone, but that are constantly interconnecting with each other. We don't learn in a vacuum. We learn in a context. So the new thing that you're going to learn has to be attached to a context that you're already in. This is why starting to learn a new subject is so much more difficult than when you already are familiar with a subject, and the new things you learn about it can be attached to what you already know about it. When you are aware of the principle of association, you can use it to learn better. Whenever you have something new to learn, just ask yourself: what is this similar to that I already know? And what's great about this is that you don't even have to make associations that are logical. Take the example of learning vocabulary for a foreign language. Sometimes there are words that are similar to a word in your own language, but this is not always the case. So what you can do is play with the new word until it reminds you of something. For example, I once wanted to learn the word “intelligent” in Tunisian Arabic. The word was “theki”. Well, I thought, intelligence is the key to a lot of good things. So I made an association in my mind between this thought and the words “the key”, and then between “the key” and “theki”. The sound between them was a bit different, but similar enough to help me remember that word. Even after several years, I have never forgotten it. In relation to the principle of association, there is the idea that the new things that we learn have to fit in with our larger picture - concerning the particular subject, but also concerning our idea of what life is, of what is true and of what is false. If it doesn't fit into this larger picture, it won't make sense to us. In other words, it won't make sense to us because we can't associate it with things that we have already learned. This is why it's so hard to make a paradigm shift. In a paradigm shift, you have to take what you already know, relate it to the new information, which at first doesn't seem to be related, and find how these seemingly disparate things are actually related. It's a lot of work and effort, and it's pretty upsetting. That's why a lot of people, when faced with the necessity of a paradigm shift because they are confronted with new things that don't fit in with their old way of thinking, will simply interpret the new facts in the light of their old way of thinking, and thus distort them, or else they'll just reject them out of hand and say that it's not true, sometimes even when it's something that they've seen with their own eyes. If you're aware of this kind of resistance in yourself and in everybody else, because it's perfectly natural to have this reaction, then this will help you to be more understanding of people who are not operating from the same paradigm as you are, and who simply cannot get what you are trying to get over to them because it does not fit in with their way of thinking. Conversely, if you're aware of your own difficulty making this kind of shift, then when somebody tells you something that does not fit into your way of thinking today, you may just stop and say, well, this doesn't fit into my way of thinking, but it doesn't necessarily mean that it's not true. I'm going to keep an open mind, and see if other facts come up that either corroborate this new way of thinking, or confirm my old way of thinking. This will give you a much more open attitude, and will help you to communicate with people who have different ways of thinking from your own. In Before Out Another principle sounds so simple that you might even wonder why I mention it. The idea is that, in learning, something has to come in to your mind and your memory before it can go out into the world and onto a piece of paper, if you're taking a test. This is so utterly obvious that I'm almost embarrassed to mention it. The problem is that I have seen people, students in particular, being so stressed about producing the answer that they forget to take the time to learn the answer. They put themselves immediately in a test-taking situation before they get themselves into a learning situation. This is done largely unconsciously, of course, but it would be well for anyone who seems to have problems learning to ask themselves if they're really taking the time to learn before they get all upset about something they haven't been able to learn, or that they think they haven't been able to learn. Stress The above problem is very related to stress, and the next principle I'm going to talk about is stress. Or rather, the need for an absence of stress if you are going to learn something. The fact is that stress shuts off your learning ability. Why is that? Well, if you're facing some kind of danger, you don't have time to sit down and learn something new. You have to work with what you already know. If you're in the forest, and there's a wild animal chasing you, you’re not going to run down a path you've never followed before - you're going to run down a path that you know will take you to safety. Unfortunately, many students in schools and people in different kinds of learning situations are so stressed-out that for them, emotionally, there's no difference between their situation and somebody who's running away from a wild animal in a forest. And they're not going to learn much under those circumstances. The brain just isn't made that way. And it's for our own protection. Now, if you're coming from the attitude that you're not capable of learning things, or that you're stupid, or whatever, then you are almost automatically going to be in a state of stress whenever you are in a learning situation. And the more stressed-out you are, the less you're going to learn, and the less you learn, the more you're going to confirm your original opinion of yourself, that is, that you're stupid. Can you see what a huge vicious circle that is? Now, think about how our whole educational system is based on putting pressure on kids. We have the idea that if we don't put pressure on them, they're not going to learn, that they'll only learn if we force them to. So we pressure them by grades, we pressure them by punishments, and we pressure them by telling them that if they don't learn, they'll never get a job, they'll never make any money, and they'll be a failure in their lives. But the problem is, if schools stopped putting pressure on kids starting today, they probably would refuse to learn, because most of them already have such a negative attitude towards learning. Once again, we find ourselves in a huge vicious circle, not only on the personal level, but on the level of the whole society. Now, I'd like you to do a little test here to examine this problem of stress - go out and find a kid who is passionate about a non-academic subject, such as motorcycles, dinosaurs, or baseball, whatever, and ask them questions about it. They may have a poor or just an average IQ, because the IQ test doesn't contain words like carburetor or brontosaurus. And yet these kids know all sorts of things about the subject that they're passionate about. So even if they have bad or mediocre results in school, you will be able to recognize genius in them. Their genius has come to the surface naturally because they are in a situation where stress is absent, and most likely the other principles of learning are present too. Motivation This leads me to another principle of learning, which is motivation. The kid who learned all those weird names of dinosaurs did it because he was interested in it. He was motivated to do it because he was fascinated by the subject itself. So if you have a positive attitude towards the subject that you are to learn, you are going to learn it with much greater ease and pleasure. Now sometimes, particularly in a school setting, your motivation may not be directly related to the subject. Maybe you have to learn math, and you're not crazy about math, but your motivation can be that if you get a good grade, you'll be able to get into a particular college that you want to go to. The more directly the positive motivation is related to the subject, the better, of course, but other motivations can be brought into play. But in all cases, there has to be some kind of a positive emotion related to the subject that you're trying to learn. Now this fact in itself may require a paradigm shift for a lot of people because this is not the way we have been taught to look at learning. We think of learning as some kind of a rational exercise that is in no way related to emotions. Well, recent research has shown that this is simply not true. Long and short-term memory Another thing to be aware of in relation to learning is the fact that we have a short-term and a long-term memory. This is very important. Kids who cram just before an exam are exercising their short-term memory, which means that two days after the exam, even if they passed it with flying colors, they will probably forget most of what they learned, because they learned only in order to pass the exam. But if you really want to learn something, you have to engage your long-term memory. It's important to be aware of this, and to see how this is related to the principle of repetition, because repetition is what's going to help put something into your long-term memory. Intention Another principle is the notion of intention. Life throws a lot of experiences in our path as we go along, and we learn a lot that way. But to accelerate and intensify the learning process, it's helpful to engage your intention. That is, to state your intention to learn this particular thing. You are stating it to yourself - you are preparing your mind to receive the thing that you want to learn, and it will make it more receptive. You can also use intention to tell your mind that you want to put this particular knowledge into your long-term memory, and not into your short-term memory. This is very important for students who are studying for a test, to remind themselves that the test is not the ultimate goal; the ultimate goal is learning. If in some subjects they might be able to get away with short-term learning, in others it's disastrous. In a foreign language, for example, learning is cumulative, and the words or grammar structures presented in one lesson will be needed in the next, and for as long as one continues to practice the language. Students who haven't understood that principle will flounder very quickly in certain subjects if they try to apply a short-term learning strategy that seems to work well enough in non-cumulative subjects to a cumulative type of subject. Do you realize how much you already know? Another principle is the fact that you already know so much. In your passage through life up until today, you have accumulated an incredible amount of knowledge. You may not recognize some or most of the things you know because they're not related to academic subjects, and you never had to take a test about them. But there are all sorts of things that you already know - both facts and things that you know how to do. You don't always pay attention to them because they just seem natural to you, or they're things that you think everybody does, but that's just the point I want to get across: everybody knows an incredible amount of things because everybody, (except those with particular handicaps) has an incredible brain, and uses it every day of their life. But we don't see it because it's right in front of our eyes. Think about how much dexterity it takes to tie your shoelaces. It's not because you do it every day and everyone around you is doing it that it's not still amazing and extraordinary. Do you think you're bad at languages? Do you realize how much you had to learn in order to speak your own native language? Do you realize the subtleties of your language that you use every day without even thinking about it? And just because it's automatic and you don't think about it, you don't realize how remarkable it is. If you aren't aware of the subtleties of your own language, then remember the last time you tried to learn a foreign language, and all the difficulties that were contained in that language. Then realize that any two or three-year-old child who is brought up in that culture will learn that language and they will learn it with absolutely no difficulty. And they will learn it because their brain, just like yours, is absolutely extraordinary, and they will learn it because all of the conditions that help learning are present. They will learn it because they hear it all the time - the principle of repetition - they will learn it because they are extremely motivated - if they don't learn how to talk, they can't communicate. They will learn it because there's no stress involved - everyone expects them to learn it. It just seems to happen naturally, and it is natural, because our brains are made that way. Our brains were made to absorb an incredible amount of information. And if we give them the right conditions, that is, the principles that I've just been talking about, then our brains will do their thing, and they will do it easily and naturally. Well-integrated learning feels obvious Now that I've reminded you that we already know a lot, we may wonder why we don't realize how much we know. The answer to that is in the next learning principle: once we've learned something, it seems obvious to us. It just becomes a part of who we are, and we don't even remember that there was a time when we didn't know it. So one problem that stems from that is the fact that we don't appreciate and realize how much we already know. But there's another problem that comes from that, and that is a problem related to teaching. A teacher doesn't always realize this either, and will sometimes omit information that is crucial for the understanding of the student without even realizing it, because it seems too obvious to mention. Let me give you an example: Maria was an illiterate adult who was learning how to read for the first time in her life. She seemed to catch on pretty well, and was sounding out syllables with good accuracy, but when there was a fairly long word, she didn't seem to understand the meaning of the word she was spelling out, and when the same word appeared later in the text, she didn't recognize it as the same one as before. In fact, people who have not had any contact with a written language do not have a very solid concept of what a word is. A spoken language is an uninterrupted sequence of sounds that flow together. When Maria's teacher suddenly realized that the concept of words, which seemed so obvious to him, needed to be explained explicitly, he did so, and Maria was then able to progress more quickly. It can happen that some teachers will omit certain basic concepts that are so obvious to them that they don't realize that the student needs to hear these concepts explained and made explicit before they can understand the next step in the learning process. Unfortunately, it can happen in this situation that the teacher will conclude that the student is lacking in intelligence because they didn't understand the lesson. And even if they don't say it outright, the student will sense that opinion, through a gesture of impatience, a sigh, a tone of voice. Another problem that comes from this principle is more general: that is, children or adults who are confronted with someone who doesn't know something that they know will very likely consider that person as being stupid: “Oh, you don't know that? My goodness, how strange!” Actually, they are the ones who are confused, because there is a huge difference between stupidity and ignorance, but there is a tendency to equate the two. Learning modalities You may have already heard that all learning comes from the senses. This in another one of those obvious things that we don't always think about. But we have different senses: the sense of sight, the sense of hearing and the sense of touch. (The senses of smell and taste are not as much involved in learning, but then again, there's been some very interesting research recently on the sense of smell in relation to learning.) Some people are more comfortable learning visually; that is, they want to see the thing, and when they see the thing that helps them to remember it. So they are going to learn best by taking notes and reading them, or by looking at diagrams and pictures. Other people, on the other hand, have an auditory memory, that is, they retain more what they hear. It would help students a lot to be aware of this, because they could notice their own preferred learning modality and use it more heavily. There can also be a problem when teachers and students have opposing modalities. Imagine a visually-oriented teacher with a student who is more auditory. The teacher will make heavy use of the blackboard and will make sure that the students are taking notes. But a dominantly auditory student may not be comfortable with this kind of system - they might just want to hear it several times without taking notes. And then consider the auditory teacher with visual students. The visual student will want to have it all down on paper, while the auditory teacher keeps on talking faster than the student can take notes. In both cases, learning will not be optimal, there will be many misunderstandings, with the teacher doubting the students' capacities and cooperativeness, and the students questioning the teacher's ability to teach. A lot of problems could be avoided if understanding of the difference in learning modalities was more widespread. And then there is the sense of touch - the kinesthetic modality. In our school systems, children are supposed to sit at their desks and be quiet and listen to the lesson. This is difficult for small children, who need to move around a lot. In fact this need continues well into the teenage years. (Incidentally, this is quite normal, and putting labels on them and giving them strong medication, which has become more and more frequent in the past few years, isn't necessarily what is best for them.) Moreover, we all learn to a certain extent from movement, especially in real life. Some people who have a problem will go for a walk, and they claim that it helps them to think, and this claim is not irrational in any way at all. However this learning modality has received very little attention up until now. But adding movement to classroom activities could increase learning in all students, particularly in those whose preferred modality is kinesthetic. Having a preferred modality doesn't mean that you don't use the others - the ideal would be to use all three modalities to help you to learn, but it's still very useful to know which modality you are most comfortable with. And if you are a teacher, being aware of all three modalities and integrating them into your teaching would be a great benefit to all of your students. Brain Hemispheres Another principle that it is very important to be aware of is the concept of brain hemispheres. This has received a lot of attention in recent years and is a very important aspect of learning. The front part of our brain is divided into two hemispheres. These two sides are connected to each other by a bundle of nerve fibers called the corpus callosum. Nerve impulses originating in the left side of the brain go to the right side of the body, and vice versa. So if you are using your right hand, the information from your right hand will go directly to your left hemisphere, and then it will cross over to the left hemisphere. We all know that people have a dominant hand, and now we're more aware of the notion that we have a dominant brain hemisphere, but it may be less well-known that we also have a dominant leg, eye, and ear. So in a person who has a dominant left hemisphere combined with a dominant right hand, leg, eye and ear, information will travel easily and quickly between the brain and the body. But this is not the only combination; any combination between these five elements is possible. Certain combinations can cause difficulties - for example, if a child has a dominant left eye and a dominant left brain, she may have more trouble learning to read, because the information goes from the left eye to the right brain, and then across to the left brain before being processed. Any stress will have a greater impact on this child than on one where the path is more direct. To complicate things more, from one activity to another, the dominance of these five elements can be different, and each side of the brain handles different activities. The left side is more associated with logic, language and math, while the right side is more related to creativity, imagination and spatial information. If you're doing a math problem, you left brain will probably come into play, while if you're playing a musical instrument, your right brain will be more active. But in general, we tend to use one side of the brain more than the other, and even though the great majority of people are right-handed, these are not all necessarily left-brained, so there are a lot of right-brain-dominant people around. This creates a problem for many students, because our present school system has given great emphasis to left-brain-dominant activities. But as we have become aware of this problem, some educators have said, “This is terrible - we have to use the right brain!” But this is not the answer. The answer is that we have a left side and a right side, and we need to use both of them if we want to learn and get along in the world. And one of the biggest secrets to being a genius is using both hemispheres together in concert. This is called brain integration. Because to say that any activity is carried out by the left brain or the right brain is not completely accurate and much too schematic. It's when both hemispheres come into play in cooperation and in harmony that any activity is enhanced. And several of the methods I'll be telling you about in the following chapter use this concept to boost learning considerably. Brainwaves Still another fascinating aspect of the brain is the existence of brainwaves. That is, the brain emits frequencies, and the different frequencies are associated with different activities. Basically, there are four categories: the delta frequency, which is the lowest, at two to three cycles per second. It is associated with deep sleep and also with deep meditation. The range above that is called theta (four to eight cycles). Theta waves are associated with creativity. It is said that children, up to the age of about seven, spend most of their time in the theta range. After that there is the alpha range, (nine to fourteen cycles) which is associated with relaxation, meditation, and yes, learning. Being in an alpha state is very conducive to learning. The beta level (15 to 40 cycles) is associated with everyday activities, and high beta levels are associated with stress. This is an extremely important concept, and it opens up huge vistas of ways we can enhance learning, as well as many other experiences in our lives. The subconscious mind We also need to be aware of the existence of the subconscious mind. Since, by definition, the subconscious is the part of ourselves that we are not aware of, it's very difficult to explore it. But we have been learning more and more about the subconscious mind in the past decades. The subconscious mind has a very important relation to learning. For one thing, it is said that the subconscious mind remembers everything that happens to us. We've all had the experience of having a word or a name on the tip of our tongues. We know that we know it, but we can't remember it. And if we just start doing something else and don't think about it anymore, very often that word will pop into our conscious mind, because it was already there in our subconscious mind. We just didn't have access to it. This puts the problem of learning on a whole different level, because if the subconscious has already retained everything that we have been exposed to, then the problem isn't one of memorizing, but rather, of bringing up what we have already learned from our subconscious to be able to use it consciously. So, like left and right hemisphere integration, it is the integration of the conscious and subconscious minds that can bring out the genius in everyone. Seven types of intelligence Intelligence is not simply having skills that are related to academic subjects. These kinds of skills are: linguistic skills - being good at words - and logical thinking, which we find in mathematics and science. According to psychologist Howard Gardner, there are actually seven different kinds of intelligence. So in addition to the above two, there are five others. The third one is kinesthetic intelligence. Some people are very good at using their body - for example sports players and dancers. The fourth one is spatial intelligence, which we find in people who are good at manipulating images, such as artists, architects and jigsaw puzzle enthusiasts. Next is musical intelligence, in people who enjoy music, sounds, rhythms. The last two concern relationships. People who are good at interpersonal relationships, the sixth type of intelligence, would be leaders, good communicators, and empathetic people. The last one is intrapersonal intelligence. People who are more introverted and who are aware of their own feelings and people who are self-motivated would qualify as having this type of intelligence. This list is very useful to help us have a more complete view of what intelligence is, but once again, we mustn't fall into an either/or attitude, where we think that these different types of intelligence are mutually exclusive. They are all important to all of us, and it would be so limiting to think that if you are good at relationships, you can't be good at math, for example. I read an article once about a professional flute player who decided to write a book. And she got a lot of opposition from people who said “How can you write a book? You're not an author, you're a musician, and it's not fair for you to have these two wonderful talents.” It's this kind of exclusive thinking that keeps us from developing the genius within us, because we have all sorts of talents and capabilities. Another example is our stereotype of the nerd: someone who is a whiz at math or computers, but who is very introverted. We find this stereotype in the following joke: What's the difference between an introverted nerd and an extroverted nerd? Answer: the extroverted nerd looks at the other person's shoes. Now this is a funny joke, but the point is, it's only a joke - it's not real. There's no rational link between being good at math and being a good or bad at interpersonal relationships. Still another example of limiting stereotypes is that of the dumb athlete. In fact, statistics have shown that good results in school subjects and in sports tend to go together. In reality, all of these different intelligences are intertwined, and developing one of them can help you develop another one, unless you have the attitude that developing one necessarily means that you have to neglect another. Unlearning is just as important as learning Even in a perfect world, where we never learned anything that was wrong or false, we would need to be able to unlearn, because we are constantly evolving and changing, and the answers that worked yesterday are not necessarily appropriate for today. But we keep our old ways of doing things, we keep our old attitudes because they feel more familiar and secure. This is true in learning as well as in all areas of our lives, and if learning is a stressful subject for us, this tendency to hold onto what we already know will be even stronger. The more insecure we feel about our learning abilities, the more threatened we will feel when we are told that we are mistaken about something, or that the strategies we have successfully used up until now are no longer sufficient. And so, instead of just making the correction and turning the page, we resist the new information and dig in our heels and refuse to budge. And as long as we continue to have that attitude, we will remain stuck, and goodbye, genius. What we don't realize enough is that many, if not most, learning problems are actually unlearning problems. Our minds are like sponges, but when there's already something in them, and that something is not correct, it has to be taken out so that you can put the correct or updated information in. If you don't, the new information will be rejected because of the principle of association stated above, that new information has to fit into the larger picture that we already have. So the more we can specify exactly what information needs to be removed, the more smoothly the learning process will go. A flagrant example of this is learning a foreign language. It has become popular among some educators to proclaim that we should learn a foreign language in the same way that we learned our native language. It sounds good at first - it was so easy for us to learn our native language. But what they are forgetting is that we already have a language. That thing we sit on is called a “chair” and nothing else. If we want to learn French, for example, we have to say “Even though up until now, I have called this object “a chair”, now I am going to unlearn the word chair and put a new word in that same place. Now, whenever I'm in that new situation of speaking French, I'm going to call it “une chaise”. But that sounds so strange. I've called it a chair even since I can remember.” And it doesn't stop there. We also have to change the word order in sentences, and, for example, put adjectives after the nouns (a chair red? Are you kidding?) All of the differences between our native language and the target language seem shocking and illogical to us, and we may then reject it completely. Here is how a native English speaker might envision the development of the French language: I can picture it as if it was yesterday. They were all sitting around joking and drinking cognac after one of those copious French dinners. Then one of them, I believe his name was Pierre, said, “Why don't we assign genders to inanimate objects?” Maurice answered, “Good idea. We'll show those Brits and Americans the next time they come over here and try to learn our language!” At which they all laughed uproariously, took another swig of cognac, and invented the subjunctive. Of course that's not the way French, or any other language, evolved. But as long as it feels that way to us, we're not going to learn a foreign language. So in any learning situation, it's always a good idea to ask these questions…
…and hold these attitudes:
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