When examining a student through an oral evaluation, I received their pauses after a question with – ” what’s the formula for that?” – written all over their faces. The few who risk answering the most basic question seek a language based on equations, but little on life experience. They count on having memorized science, and short on understanding it. We need a mindset change in learning.
We don’t learn to know, but to understand.
We tend to forget what we know when we cease to use it in our daily life. But we never forget what we understand because it became part of our life.
Using our memory to learn is a good thing, but not the only one, or the essential. When we convert knowledge into life, we come up with images and metaphors which exert a powerful influence in our view of the world, and when we share it with others.
The human superpower of learning is a force of cultural change when we develop the skill of using everyday language to explain complex concepts, and through them enrich people’s lives.