Tuesday, February 20, 2007

Natural Process of Learning contn...

In the second stage of learning, the Action Organs are used to do the things and learn by doing. Hands, feet and mouth are called action organs, of which, the hands and the mouth are chiefly used. We can express ourselves or communicate with the others by mouth. By using hands, we perform several actions and can create things. In the process, our body gets a variety of feels and experiences. Due to such experiences, human beings develop skills and craftsmanship. A carpenter driver a long nail in a block of wood, just with a few perfect strokes of a hammer. If an inexperienced person attempts the same, he may end up bending the nail after hitting several strokes! Thus, the physical skills can be acquired only by constantly working, using the action organs. All the games, every type of physical work, excellent speech or arguments, all are possible only with the constant use of action organs. This type of education too, is never forgotten, once perfected. No one forgets the ‘swimming’ skill due to a gap of few years!

The Third stage of learning is the brainwork. This is the type of learning, which is usually referred to by the word “Education”, but it is very difficult to guess how much such education one could really acquire. It is usually observed that any brainwork commensurate with the exposure received in the first two stages of education is found easy to understand and to digest. If the exposure in the first two stages is not received adequately, the brain does not get fully convinced by the information merely told, and tries to discard such information. A child who never has seen a cow cannot easily believe that ‘Cow gives milk’. For him, the truth is ‘A shopkeeper gives milk’! But still he has to mug up that the “Cow gives milk” and his brain is reluctant to accept such an imaginary description.

This precisely is the basic reason for so-called failure of many students, in so called education system. With no support of the experiences of the first two stages of education, how can everyone learn just by mugging up? The urban children, the rural children and the tribal children have distinctly different experiences and exposures in their first two stages of learning. But still they all have to undergo the same educational curriculum. Do you really think this justifiable?

Trying to do any brainwork in absence of the physical experiences is like playing a game of ‘Blind fold’. Some may be fortunate enough to succeed in this game, but this certainly is not a natural way of learning. So long as the first two stages of learning do not get incorporated in the education system, the problem of fall-outs will never get solved and also the number of confidence-less educated unemployed will keep increasing. Some smart Aleck in the ministry, however, is likely to find a quick solution like conducting fourteen tests in a year! We are certainly not short of such smart people, are we?

Natural Process of Learning

Learning process in human beings is endless. To take notice of the events that happen around, think on them, try to discover the logic in them and then draw the conclusion, is the general nature of this type of learning.

This process need not get followed intentionally, many a times it happens unknowingly. Especially, the small kids learn many things by watching what happens around them and then imitating those words or actions, without knowing the effects of such actions. You might have read in newspapers, about the children who lost their lives while imitating ‘Shaktiman” That is why the elders must be cautious of their speech and actions when the children are around, because this type of learning is highly effective and usually never forgotten.

Basic five senses received by the body is considered to be the first stage of learning, Sound, sight, smell, touch and taste are the five ways of acquiring the information of the world around us. This instinct is very strong in babies who are yet to learn language. That is why such babies try to put everything in their mouths, they want to touch everything and then bang it on the floor to hear it’s sound! This tendency reduces with age but is never entirely lost. When the American Lunar craft brought down the soil from the Moon’s surface, the scientists first touched it, and then smelt, some of them literally did put a pinch of it in the mouth! In spite of the most modern testing equipment being available to them, they felt it ore reliable to believe in physical senses. That is why the education acquired in this manner is never forgotten....cont.