Learning

I have previously stated that my interest in this novel fluctuates steadily, almost like a sine graph, and this week, the narrator recounts another part of the mysterious Phaedrus’s life that revolves around the topic of work ethic and Phaedrus’s own feelings and theories on originality. Barely ignoring that little bit about Phaedrus having electrodes connected to his brain, I found myself more interested in Phaedrus’s time working as a teacher (can you believe it?). I think it can be decided that most students struggle to begin writing a paper, and most of the time, they cannot understand why that is. Phaedrus gives a sound answer: we are designed to imitate.

                I think you will find it humorous that I ”pulled a Pirsig“ as I was driving home from school this past week. This means  that I found myself contemplating something deep while driving down a road- the influence is beginning to settle, isn’t it? Anyway, what I found myself thinking about was the concept of learning; I concluded that human beings learn from three things: memorization, association, and negation. It is almost too eerie that this week’s reading has to do with something similar. Phaedrus describes the learning process to be like clockwork: insert information, shell out the same information with different wording. He had concluded that the reason why students find it so difficult to write new material is because they have difficulty searching for any example they had previously read, heard, or had learned beforehand. This holds true in many ways; the only way to become a better “creator” is to read, listen to, or observe a variety of creations, because one’s style is merely a cocktail of the styles of others. We become parrots trained in the art of bullsh*t, which is admirable when done right, but hard to achieve. Phaedrus’s solution was to start small, and work one’s way up slowly, which works well too.

                It was interesting to see the topic of grades in school come up in the conversation. It is not the first time that I have witnessed the feelings that Phaedrus holds for the system- many people do believe that it eliminates the ability to truly teach because students focus more on getting grades than learning for their own personal benefit. I do not think this problem arises from the grading scale, rather, the fact that intrinsic motivation is being lost in coming generations. True, a mule will only work if it is whipped to do so, but there is fine, fine line between human beings and mules, and one of the deciding factors includes intrinsic motivation. I had been raised to understand that grades were just an added benefit to acquiring knowledge, so they have never been the source of my own motivation. I think that students just have to grow to love knowledge itself, and that does come a lot from development as a child and the kind of people that raise the child, but that’s another story. Anyway, I hope I can break this annoying roller coaster of interest and just have an uphill climb from here.