How Eastern And Western Cultures Tackle Learning
Jim Stigler is a psychologist who studies the differences in how Eastern and Western cultures approach learning. After watching a Japanese student try and fail and try again, for a whole period, to draw a geometric shape in front of the entire class, and then enjoy the experience … he knew something was different about the philosophy of struggle in Eastern classrooms. A key bit from the NPR story (emphasis mine):
“I think that from very early ages we [in America] see struggle as an indicator that you’re just not very smart,” Stigler says. “It’s a sign of low ability — people who are smart don’t struggle, they just naturally get it, that’s our folk theory. Whereas in Asian cultures they tend to see struggle more as an opportunity.”
In Eastern cultures, Stigler says, it’s just assumed that struggle is a predictable part of the learning process. Everyone is expected to struggle in the process of learning, and so struggling becomes a chance to show that you, the student, have what it takes emotionally to resolve the problem by persisting through that struggle.
“They’ve taught them that suffering can be a good thing,” Stigler says. “I mean it sounds bad, but I think that’s what they’ve taught them.”
Not all Eastern cultures are identical, of course, but I think it could serve American students nicely to realize that yes, this stuff is hard, struggle is part of learning, and not learning something at the same pace as others doesn’t mean you are stupid … it means you are learning the way that you learn.
That idea should be encouraged. Success in learning and in life comes from the desire to work hard to master the problems before you. Intelligence is not bestowed upon us like magical powers from above.
Source: NPR
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Here’s an excerpt from “Hot for E-Teacher: 4 reasons your brain loves to learn online” via The Next Web, written by Dave Goodsmith
1) Memory: This is your brain on-line. We mean, this, right now, what you’re reading. It’s your brain. On-line.
According to Columbia neuroscientist Betsy Sparrow and her team, “We are becoming symbiotic with our computer tools”. When participants in Dr. Sparrow’s studies thought a fact was saved somewhere accessible, they’d forget it. Furthermore, the more difficult a question was, the more likely participants were to think of the Internet, rather than actually try to work out an answer on their own.
Dr. Sparrow discusses memory in the age of Google.
So is offloading our brain making us dumber? Not according to rising edusoftware giant Knewton’s David Kuntz:
“Accessibility [of information] changes the relative importance of certain topics in much the same ways that a calculator changes the relative importance of some things.”
Kuntz, who’s V.P. of research at the fast growing adaptive learning company, explained that fields of knowledge that were off-loaded simply left room for cogitation on other topics.
“Long division, for example, is a process that, in my opinion, is more or less irrelevant, you never have to work through a problem in that way.”
Our dependence on the web for facts might even be making us smarter. UCLA neuroscientist and author Gary Small did an exploratory fmri study and found that the web-surfer’s googling “may actually engage a greater extent of neural circuitry” than paper-based complex reasoning.
So we’re off-loading our memories to the internet, but when we need to learn a challenging technique, like coding, it takes more than data storage to help us – it takes smile.
See the rest of the reasons at The Next Web](http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lxr079mGMe1qedj2ho1_1280.jpg)
