How Adults Learn
HOW ADULTS LEARN (From Growing Without Schooling 75.)
Learning Algebra
More from Carole Skinner:
Part of my winter days were spent learning algebra (see Kim Jeffrey's ‘Relearning Algebra," GWS 74). The same friend who convinced me that my math phobia need not be permanent also offered free phone tutoring. I have found my own attitude towards learning greatly improved since becoming a homeschooling Mom. Although I was a high school dropout, this does not at all reduce my confidence or determination to continue homeschooling my four youngest children. If I should find myself, at some stage, incapable of assisting them, the chances are that their father will be able to do so, and if he is not able, then we'll seek outside help.
Writing for Local Newspaper
Cindy Grieshafur of Indiana writes:
Regarding getting information and self-teaching: About three years ago I decided I wanted to do some freelance writing. I really wanted a back-up method of making some money in case something should ever happen to my husband. I had done some writing for our state La Leche League newsletter, and had edited the memory book for my high school reunion (a lot of fun!). I decided to take a correspondence course for writing non-fiction. I paid for the course and did about three lessons, then answered an advertisement in our local newspaper for correspondents. To my surprise I was asked to write for the newspaper.
I did not finish the correspondence course because I didn't like being graded, but I do use the books that came with the course. I hope I remember this when my own children stgn up for a course and don't want to finish! I have had about twelve articles published in the newspaper. I thLink it is helpful for my children to see my writing experiences, too. One day David was watching me as I wrote an article. I could tell he was bored as I was reading through some notes and consulting the dictionary. I asked him what he was thinking. "I'm waiting for you to write," he said. I was glad to have an occasion to show him that reading and research are part of writing.
Playing Around With Physics
[Susannah Sheffer:] I’ve always loved this story from Surely You're Joking, Mr, Feynman, because it helps me remember how adults learn and how we should- approach our work. Feynman is writing about his early days as a professor of physics:
…Then I had another thought: Physics disgusts me a little bit now, but I used to enjoy doing physics. Why did I enjoy it? I used to play with it.... When I was in high school, I'd see water running out of a faucet growing narrower, and wonder if I could figure out what determines that curve. I found it was rather easy to do. I didn't have to do it; it wasn’t important for the future of science; somebody else had already done it. That didn't make any difference: I'd invent things and play with things for my own entertainment. So I got this new attitude.... Within a week I was in the cafeteria and some guy, fooling around, throws a plate ln the air. As the plate went up in the air I saw it wobble, and I noticed the red medallion of Cornell on the plate going around. It was pretty obvious to me that the medallion went around faster than the wobbling. I had nothing to do, so I start to figure out the motion of the rotating plate. I discover that when the angle is very slight, the medallion rotates twice as fast as the wobble rate—two to one! It came out of a complicated equation! Then I thought, “Is there some way I can see ln a more fundamental way, by looking at the forces or the dynamics, why it's two to one?”
I don't remember how I did it, but I ultimately worked out what the motion of the mass particles is, and how all the accelerations balance to make it come out two to one. … I went on to work out equations of wobbles. Then I thought about how electron orbits start to move in relativity. Then there's the Dirac equation in electrodynamics.... It was effortless. It was easy to play with these things.... There was no importance to what I was doing, but ultimately there was. The diagrams and the whole business that I got the Nobel Prize for came from that piddling around with the wobbling plate.
