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Slow pace up a steep hill

I’ve just learned a new way to learn. I wish I’d known about it years ago, but I suppose when I was young, the default position was that I was going to learn things anyway -no matter how. I don’t think there were any advanced warnings issued about octogenarianism then, however; I probably wouldn’t have believed them anyway: the young seldom think that far ahead.

But no matter, looking back, I think I did pretty well: I finished school, I finished university, I finished post-grad training, and I finished a long career using what I’d absorbed along the way. Now, however, I feel it is once again incumbent upon me to add to my already leaking cup of knowledge. Things have changed: ‘things fall apart; the centre cannot hold’ as Yeats once observed. Indeed, I don’t seem to be able to stay abreast of things as well as I used to; I suppose some of my original neural circuits retired along with their keeper…

So, it’s encouraging to discover that there may be a way of nudging the little grey cells into one final burst of energy as they race to the finish line. I gather it’s like using scaffolding while you construct something: before you try to learn something new, test yourself on how much you already know about it -guessing, actually. Interestingly, if you later discover you were wrong in your guesses, you retain the newly discovered (and correct) answers more efficiently. Perhaps the guesses make you more curious to discover whether you got it right, or maybe you are more attentive to the newly discovered facts than if you’d simply encountered them as you wandered through the subsequent information. Of course, it might also draw your attention to what you do and do not know and sufficiently embarrass your self-esteem to make you want to fill in any gaps.

Great idea, although I realize variations on the method have been around for quite a while. I remember another variation of the interrogation (that now seems backward) where some questions about whatever facts had been taught in the text were included as a kind of revisional test at the end of a chapter -it was a big thing in a lot of the textbooks when I was I high school. I suppose that might have been a good idea for some, but I often seemed to get my answers wrong and got worried that I’d have to read the whole chapter again; I wasn’t really as curious about the answers as I was mortified that I’d missed them in the first place.

No, having a salient pretest that reveals my initial ignorance makes more sense, eh? I mean if I knew the answers, I wouldn’t have had to read the chapter in the first place, right? Using a goad like a wrong guess would have been a great incentive. Of course, if I’d guessed right, it would certainly have validated my joining of the chess club rather than the football team (which didn’t really need another water-boy anyway).

I got me wondering whether it might have more universal applicability, though. I decided to quiz the guys on coffee Wednesdays at the Food Court before I launched into a topic I’d carefully researched the night before; I usually tried to impress them with a soupçon of the esoteric knowledge I’d gleaned from some abstruse essay on one of my phone apps.

I’ve always been drawn to etymology but sadly, the people I used to hang out with in those far off university days, were all etymologiae and too often dropped their gauntlets at my feet. The only thing the coffee guys dropped were the crumbs from their doughnuts; I felt safe with them, but I had to wait for an opportunity: I had to wait until they’d finished chewing before I embarked upon a quiz.

As the founding member of my long ago Winnipeg high school’s Vocabulary Club, I saw etymology as more of a life-long curiosity about words than a self-aggrandizing lark. The coffee guys saw it more as an example of the latter, however. I knew I had to be careful and work my quiz only gradually into the conversation.

Fortunately only Jeremy and Lewis were at the table the day I decided to try the quiz; it was a proof-of-concept trial on a tough group, though. Jeremy was an eighty-something year old retired English teacher who punctuated every sentence with thumps of his cane on the floor as if he were still in front of a classroom full of recalcitrant pupils. Lewis was of a similar age, I suppose, but he’d never lost the inquisitive legal demeanour he’d acquired as a judge after years on the bench: he analysed every word, and only after careful appraisal, replied with devastating common sense.

Jeremy was arguing with Lewis when I arrived. He made brief eye contact with me, smiled, and then tore into Lewis again.

“That’s a positively egregious argument, Jeremy…” Lewis said as he slowly shook his head, then winked at me.

Hah! A perfect opening, I realized, looking at Jeremy. “Do you remember the roots of egregious, Jer?” I said, teasing him while trying not to appear too smug.

He rolled his eyes as if to brush me out of the argument he was having with Lewis. “You trying to take over the argument, or a class, G?”

I just smiled and waited until he collected his thoughts.

“It means ‘terrible, shockingly bad’ of course. And I don’t think Lewis really meant that…” he added with a poorly disguised supercilious stare at Lewis.

“In fact, G asked you about its roots, not its definition,” Lewis quickly responded with a twinkle in his eye and a quick glance at me. “And as I recall, its etymological roots derive from the Latin prefix ex –meaning ‘out of’, and greg– ‘the flock, or crowd’… In other words, meaning more like ‘unusual’ or perhaps ‘unexpected’… Thank you for asking, G: it softens my criticism of Jeremy’s argument somewhat.”

I have to admit I hadn’t thought of it like that. But then again I hadn’t reckoned on Lewis being at the table for my trial run.

“Since we’re playing that game, G, do you know what ‘ab uno disce omnes’  means?” I could tell by his impression that Lewis was having fun sharing his erudition.

I took Latin in first year university, but it might as well have been in another lifetime. “Well… ab uno I think means something like ‘from one’, and disce omnes, I think means ‘says everything’… Am I close?”

Lewis chuckled and nodded his head. “A single example reveals a universal truth.”

“So… Why are you testing me Lewis?”

His smile broadened. “Because it seems to me that you were trying to test Jeremy, and then use it to explain something to both of us that would end up being a general principal: a teaching moment…”

“You read that article too, eh Lewis?” Jeremy added as someone used to dealing with kids who faked  their reading assignments with facts from Classic Comic Books.

I’m not sure if I just failed the proof of concept…

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