It must be written somewhere

It must be written somewhere! There are those uncountable "laws" and "rules" that are never written, seldom said, but that we are all so familiar with. It is that always-present reality that leads me to believe that this law must be written somewhere. Every 'soccer-mom' and every 'Disney-land-dad' know that organization and timely departure is inversely proportional to the number of people who are joining you on adventure. From my male perspective, it is marvelously easy to finish a project, clean and dress, and be on my way in a timely manner, whatever the destination, however exciting the prospect! Should the occasion involve my wife, this timely departure somehow falls apart in the ever-present and nagging conundrums of complexity. There are the cloths issues, the phone calls, the neighbors, paperboys, mail, dirty dishes, and all the other reasons that my simple mind tends to overlook or forget about. Your gratitude for her pointing out your shortcomings is superseded only by your disappointment and frustration for the delaying your adventure. These disasters-in-waiting seem worthy of your delay, but, you can't help thinking they would somehow work themselves out, and that upon return, the earth would still be in orbit as the third planet from the sun! Add to your adventure, a third party, your adventure may well be delayed until tomorrow. Children are bad about this, but an in-law will drive you to drink, and you better have and ample supply on Zantac(anti-acid) on hand!

These situations, however, all pale in comparison to a field trip I took with fifty college freshmen. There are many place I could begin to tell this story, because I have made this three-day excursion on numerous occasions, each trip with it's own unique litany of problems. After so many opportunities, you would think that I had the group functioning with the lock-step coordination of a millipede's many legs. You might think so, I could only hope so, but, it is written somewhere that the inverse, without question, is multiplied by the square of the number of participants!

The occasion of the infamous field trip, was my eight visits to Joshua Tree National Park. A veteran of leading field trips all over the world, none can compare to the group of college freshmen who, by virtue of their age and self-anointed certainty, alone, are the possessors of all that is to be known!

Don't mistake my tone, or construe that I harbor some anger toward this age group. On the contrary they never cease to amaze me, invigorate me, and the challenge of their mental gymnastics makes everyday grand! Joshua Tree is a destination with a particular set of planning problems, and over the years I have developed a program to coordinate my group that would draw the envy of the State Department for its complexity. I have also come to realize, that no matter how good your plan, don't underestimate the capacity of young adults to obfuscate it!

For students expecting to major in the life sciences or medical field, Biology in particular, their long academic odyssey must begin with a yearlong introductory course. For institutions on the quarter system, this is three quarters of intense work. Those on the semester system, two semesters of five units each are required. Coming out of most high schools, these students are ill prepared for the rigors of a collegiate level science class. Coupled with the fact that they assume that a five-unit class required about as much commitment as a usual three unit class, and you have a recipe for academic disaster.

I say "most high-schools" because, I have observed over and over their inability to make the adjustment to "conceptual" learning and "knowing" a subject. I spend an inordinate amount of time trying to help them understand the difference in "conceptual" learning, and what usually passes for the Rote learning they have become accustomed to. Rote is the manner of redundancy typically represented by flash cards. Students are encouraged to this style of learning by their friends, their parents, even their teachers. Commercialization of this learning can be found in any bookstore, where you can find flashcards on practically any subject, already prepared for you. These pre-printed cards represent the basement of the tower of learning that lies ahead of the student. It is the basement because Rote is the lowest form of learning! Rote is how we train circus bears, and Sea world Seals! It is how we train our dogs and attempt to train cats! Rote learning is redundancy without variation! For a bear or a dog, they learn by repetition. We reward their success and fairly quickly they associate success with reward. Bears being several orders of magnitude more intelligent that Fido, they learn very quickly. Once you have a bear's attention, and they understand what is expected of them, redundancy is at a minimum. It is as if they are saying, "Ok, ok, I get it, what shall be do now!" For Fido, we have to work a little longer and the repetition must be consistent! After a bit, they make the connection, and reward is your praise alone. Praise doesn’t work well with bears; they don't really give a damn about our excitement or lavished encouragement. A sweet treat, or meat, and they are good to go! This breaks up the boredom of captivity, and seems like a pretty good way to pass the time away. Rote is reduced to a few repetitions, and, "yeah, ok, that again!"

Where Rote fails the freshmen, is exactly where it fails Fido! Any variation on the theme and everything breaks down. Fido hears the stream of human-speak, listening for the key words of command. Locked on by the redundancy of Rote, Fido hears those key words and responds in some seemingly intelligent manner. Fido had connected the dots, so to speak, and our pleasure is manifest in out excitement, reinforcing Fido's responsiveness. But, if we use a different word, or sequence the words in a novel way, Fido is dumbstruck, dumb as a post! My beloved Australian Shepard, Blue, would look at me as motionless as a monument in these circumstances. On most occasions his upper lip would tuck up under itself, so that this canine tooth was revealed, and he would just stand there with this idiotic expression! "Say what," was written all over his face, and not a muscle would move! I don't know what a bear would do in this circumstance, probably pretty much what ever it wanted, I suppose. But the point is, Rote learning is a consequence of the mind 'connecting the dots', a consequence of repetitions to reinforce the cerebral connections!

Blue's lack of recognition is similar for the freshman. Failure lies in the variation! Let me use my classroom to illustrate what I mean. Much to the chagrin of most of my students, I am pretty old fashion in my teaching style. I don't show films on a subject, I seldom use "over-head projections", painted in the glitzy colors, and I don't accept reports with color overlays and see-through folders, "packaged", as it were, to impress. I rely upon my old fashion style, because I believe that it is the best way, and because I want my students to succeed on "merit" based on learning, not "packaging". Old Fashion, means that I lecture. I profess from an outline that follows the pedagogy of the textbook. I expect them to take notes, to listen whether or not they are interested, and to review what they have been introduced to. Now, to put this all together in a "conceptual" learning experience, consider what has transpired. They have used the "visual" centers of their brain to scan the outline, and fix on the organization and sequence. They have used their acoustic centers as the lecture unfolds. By modulating my voice and moving from place to place in the front of the room, I keep their attention and acoustic involvement maximized. As they transcribe the lecture, they bring on-line their motor cortex. These events of writing, coupled with the acoustic and visual involvement, begins the process of laying the cerebral connections that will later allow recall that we can interpret as learning. When they review what they have seen, what they heard, and what they have written, they reinforce these connections and build the chemistry of memory. Leaning has occurred!

Now, take the Rote process. From the myriad of sources the students draw from, a collection of flash cards are made. They could be from "key words" that are frequently published at the end of the chapters. They could be drawn from the bold faced words in each chapter. They could be from the lecture notes. There are so many ways students find to develop their own lists, which are, most frequently, incomplete. But, it does not matter where they get their list, or how they generate them. They constitute basic Rote and set the stage for mediocre learning. These lists do not involve all of the cerebral centers, and they do not involve the various centers simultaneously! The most fundamental processes of developing memory, of learning are already been compromised. Now, take the most dedicated student of this process. They develop comprehensive lists, they review their flash cards in a routine and concise manner, and they spend an inordinate amount of time doing this. On exam day, they are noticeably frustrated, they become agitated, and their emotions and energy become their own enemy as their anxiety rises out of control. They recognize the information, they have spent an inordinate amount of time preparing, and they should be doing better! Something is wrong, it can't be their fault, and it must be the fault of the test! It must be the instructor's fault! So what went wrong? Well, the answer is not easy because the cognitive process is not easy! The process of building the flashcards lent itself, very little to nothing, in acquiring information, learning! Then the repetitive review of the bank of cards slowly delivers success as the student ticks off the correct answer after hours of review. Now, they think they are ready for the exam. The frustration and consequential anxiety arise because the exam question seldom is written in a manner that is like or similar to their flash card. Like Fido before, the words, or the order of the words are different than the Rote-acquired cerebral connections. In other words, there is not a connection. Blue would stand there with that idiotic curled lip, with that "say what" expression about his countenance, but we humans are far too complex to accept stupidity, or even the look of it! We get frustrated, angry, anxious, and we set about destroying ourselves, or looking for scapegoats! We have not learned the information, only some isolated, and disconnected fact about it! The cognitive process is very complex, but it involves our brain with its myriad of centers "talking'' to itself, sorting, the information to find the certainty that constitutes the correct response from these memory storage areas. If you haven't put the information in, how can you hope to retrieve it? If you haven't involved as many of the associations centers as possible, you deprive the brain of the opportunity to search for the links that will generate a response. Rote learning doesn't give you those links! It hard-wires that limited word or phrase, which if the exam question is so worded, you will recognize, but anything different and you are history! Just curl your lip and sit there! The information was outlined, it was discussed, you took notes, you read it, and you made a flash card! That's five different ways this information has come to you. Now you read it on the exam and it is, quite possibly in a sixty form. Which one will you recognize? Rote only gives you the cerebral linkage for one of these six. You are hard-wired for only one out of six. Given the enormous gift of the human intelligence, our cognitive process searches our brain for some other link, but it just isn't there. You didn't put it in. Your cerebral firing accelerates to warp-speed and you exhaust yourself. This spills off into a myriad of emotions, with frustrations and anxiety topping the list. Other emotions that follow are anger, defeat, blame, and, in ever increasing frequency, "so what!" This latest trend seems born out of the same social trends that lend to the "Bart Simpson" attitude of dedicated under-achievement. Both the circus bears and 'ole Blue would never settle for this last attitude. Neither would be willing to give up their treat or their desire to please as omnipotent forces for success, let alone something apparently as mundane to the student, as their future! So, Rote will give you about a one-in-six, or upward to a one-in-four chance of making the connection that the student is willing to accept and a demonstration of "knowing" a subject. On a hundred-point exam, that translates to about 17 to 25 percent, not exactly leadership kinds of scores!

So, how do you put your exceedingly powerful cognitive functions to work for you? It is amazingly simple, but then so is a back flip with a full twist if you have the training! Disappointingly, few young minds get the training, and it is not their teachers fault (usually), so who is to blame? There is so much that we don't know about the cognitive process. Models for learning are almost as numerous as the modelers themselves. The most common is, not coincidently, the simplest. And we already know the simplest form of learning is------------remember---------bears, seals, Fido? Oh good, you remember it, Rote! Would you like a pat on the head, or a smelly piece of fish?

This was not meant to be a dissertation on learning, but digressions can be fun and it serves my purposes in the classroom. Stepping into the quagmire of cerebral functions and the processing of information, there are some certainties. We are only now beginning to understand that there seems to be as many ways to process information as there are processors, so we long suppressed the ridiculous, with more than seven billion of us trying to get along. I have read professional papers of differences between women and men. Now we have racial differences in information processing.

We also have age differences, and if I hear another student tell me that they are a "visual learner", I think I will just puck on them! Sorry, I didn't mean to be so graphic, but you must know what I mean. And how many cerebral cortex areas did you use to recognize my meaning? The latest trend is to "test" your "learning differences." Now we are talking a real can of worms! Not that there aren't learning deficits, but I think that a lot of the differences lie in the test themselves, they simply are not sophisticated enough to measure the many ways people process!