Applying your liberal education in the real world? Try ‘directness’!

How often do we find that learnings from the classroom translate into something marginally useful in the real world? Are these skills “transferable”? “Transfer” is a true problem faced by students and educators alike. Is this situation even solvable? YI believe it is: “directness” is the way.

What really does “directness” mean?

Directness is simply a principle. Okay but why care about learning principles at all?

Let’s look at an example: language learning. There are several stories of “having learnt French (don’t ask me about it) but not being able to use a word of it”. Why is it so? Are languages naturally harder or does it have to do with the way it is learnt? Assuming the learning technique to be at fault, two YouTubers Johnny Harris and Nathaniel Crew set out to find out if there was a more efficient way to “learn” a language.

They found that being pragmatic and personal with learning a language delivers better results. Their goal was simple: to be able to communicate with a native speakers. This might seem naive but is arguably way more pragmatic than the traditional route. This is simply just applying And it shows us that the principle of directness is very personal and is thus also, heutagogical by nature.

TLDR: Directness is a learning principle and it’s all about going straight ahead

But why does it matter?

This seems like a really good coincidence (so good that it lets me write this article?) or does it have some empirical evidence? Yes, indeed it does! To quote from Michelene Chi’s book :

“In almost all the empirical work to date, on the role of example solutions, a student who has studied examples often cannot solve problems that deviate slightly from the example solution.”

Moreover, developmental psychologist Howard Gardner in his book “The Unschooled Mind: How Children Think and How Schools Should Teach” points to evidence that makes it clear “that even students who receive honors grades in college-level physics courses are frequently unable to solve basic problems and questions encountered in a form slightly different from that on which they have been formally instructed and tested.” This isn’t constrained to just academic institutions! Corporate training also undergoes similar failures too.

What do you think about the principle of directness? Do you have enough of it in your learning journeys? Write to us about it on contact@beyond8.in or visit us on www.beyond8.in if you want to know more about how we make liberal education work for our learners.

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