this used to be my playground

So I was talking to someone the other day and I said, I was a terrible student at school. In fact if there is one thing I could change in my life, is to change the method of instruction and school going behaviour that I had. By that I do NOT mean I wish I was a 'better' student in the 'traditional' sense (i.e. pay attention during class, do homework, study for tests, manage time well and do extra curricular activities as well, read outside the curriculum, engage with other students re class work (i.e. group study) etc.etc.); but that I had more to show in terms of learning; for the time I spent to school.

And this is true of ALL the schools I went to; from Australia, to Singapore, to London, to the United States. So it wasn't just a cultural and pedagogical issue.

I had friends who were STELLAR students, friends who were far more brighter, more capable, more 'in' with the teachers and principals; all of that. Friends whom basically got a lot out of their education and the time they spent in school. (Of course I made GREAT friends in school, for which I will be forever grateful for. And I learnt how the normal world works, how they think, how cultural modes of production are disseminated etc.etc.)

I pretty much spent most of 'class-time' thinking about either a) boys, b) the newest book I was reading (always fiction), c) politics d) a new movie plot; or fantasy sequence (one memorable incident was when my biology lab partner asked me "What are you thinking about right now?? and I said: I was thinking about me drowning in a lake, and my french teacher rescuing me, and our ensuing 'damsel-in-distress meets heroic rescuer conversation in French. I could never concentrate for more than 10-15 minutes at a time (and clocked in 20 minutes during my peak).
And I never learnt to think logically; which meant I was always unable to argue/debate/converse during high school. I just couldn't follow how other people thought, and how to speak that same language.

Now that I'm older, i'm a little bit more assimilated in the cultural modes of communication. I can concentrate very intensely, unconsciously if a topic engages me. (I tend to be exhausted though, after such periods). But I still tend to have a very Tourette-style mode of thinking AND communicating; in short, random, bursts of questions and thoughts. I do not think logically or linearly (which sounds cool, until you realize that you cannot structure anything and that every comment you receive on any paper is a) lack of structure, b) lack of flow blah blah blah c) irrelevant to the topic at hand (why is it irrelevant??? I THINK IT IS GODDAMNED RELEVANT).

But I guess that's life, and now, it's too late to change the way one thinks.

But, in no obvious order, the following are things I wished I had been taught in school, and how I wished school was different.

a) Shorter school days, 20 minute lectures on ideas, experiments, equations, and problems. i.e. not time spent explaining the concept since most teachers are REALLY poor 'teach'ers, but rather, let children learn HOW to learn, figure out stuff for themselves, run into road blocks etc. Of course this is a far more intensive teaching process than the standard 'lecture-problem set marking' mode.

But the shorter school days was one reason where I felt that the place where I learnt the most was in LSE, where the 'class' time was so short, the subjects were so in depth and taught over long periods of time (12 months rather than the 10 weeks in the US it takes for one subject), and where you spent long hours staring out of the Chancery Lane st library windows either thinking about a) cake or b) Rousseau and the nature of man (I spent a lot of time on this topic.)

b) Group work was by far the most painful thing in the US, to do. Not only did people come to the table with different capacities and blocks of knowledge, they came with different communication styles a) the 'rhetoric' person who loved the sound of his own voice, b) the ideas person who wanted to talk about every tangential idea, b) the 'rules' person who just wanted to stick to the narrow structure of the assignment task, and d) the 'leader' who wanted his vision mapped out.

I just wanted to go home.

But at the same time, I realize how it can be useful for understanding how other people communicate, how real world problems are solved mainly through a mixture of haste, fatigue, verbal compromise (where the guy who talks the loudest gets heard), and deadlines.
I would say definitely to HIGHLY limit the group work, make it more about negotiation and communication, and use the classroom format for a larger discussion (that was more facilitated and structured and inclusive).

c) The other things I didn't learn at school included a) how to interact with people (or as David Brooks said in the NYT this week: how to select a spouse, how to maintain a relationship with someone you love. By far this is the most important decision that you will make in your life, as well as the most important choice that has the most bearing over your lifetime happiness. On this topic there was neither instruction nor role models).

d) how to manage money: enough said. how to maintain checking, savings, trading, retirement, health, college accounts. how to manage discretionary spending, mortgage debt, student loan debt, credit card debt. How to build wealth. On this: NOTHING.

e) how to write: Not writing subordinated to a specific topic where the writing was judged on the topic, and what was taught was the topic itself; but actual writing. How to be concise, relevant, engaging, compelling and investigative. On this; nothing. I don't know where I learned to write (and I still cringe at my writing), but I think it was only towards the last semester of LSE, and my boss at Morgan Stanley; Tim who had the best writing style I saw personally, who really hung, drew and quartered my writing and forced me to write better and better (for non fiction of course).

f) how to negotiate: Now this I learned somewhat in Harvard, but only by choice. Everyone should have these lessons learnt at an earlier stage rather than later. The art of getting what you want in a world with competing demands and scarce resources without compromising your integrity or someone else's integrity or needs is essential. These techniques come in handy everywhere: from buying a car, to getting a promotion, to making joint decisions with spouses, to handling your parents.

g) And the last, that I can think of right now, which is for me the most important was : how to learn. On this point, I cannot say enough. I did not say 'how to think', but 'how to learn'. This is so important for everything; for the growth of an individual, for the growth of a society, for the growth of government and policy, for the progress of ability in ANY field. It requires teaching how one can first, a) identify the unknown: i.e. know what you do not know and know what you do know. This sounds basic, but very few people can do this. b) identify inter-relatedness. Nothing happens in isolation; not even algebra. Understanding how a particular topic; pick any topic: e.g. rain water harvestation is connected to a variety of competing influences and pressures from how its history evolved, to how the product or process or topic works, to the subject of rainwater and harvestation, to how the product is used and what influences its take up (from cultural, to agricultural practices, to policymakers, to distribution channels, to colonial influences, to desertification) and knowing or being aware that all of these create a certain topic; is essential. So knowing that, even if you do not know it in GREAT detail is essential. Then comes the 'investigating", or the 'going deep' process where one has to know when one has reached a limit of learning (which is of course either a) personal or related to the task at hand) and when one hasn't reached it yet; asking the right questions to inform understanding; knowing that there is more (i guess this is connected to 'know what you don't know'). All that sort of thing. And the last thing is managing memory. We all have a limited and declining capacity to remember things. Learning how to a) expand one's memory, b) make the relevant trade offs in choosing what to remember and what not to, and c) managing declining capacity (i.e. procedures not to forget) are key. Right now I have a pretty decent photographic memory, but it has seriously declined and I just KNOW that I am going to get Alzheimer's and should start learning how to manage it!

This also brings to mind the research done in this field about intelligence, knowledge and memory. The research shows that in terms of intelligence (i.e. speed of grasp, reach, lateral thinking and in depth thinking, investigative thinking); we hit our peak at 17 and steadily decline. When I look back on my own life; this is definitely true. I thought MUCH more and much faster when I was 17, then I do now. (I will leave it to the gods to judge whether the 'topics' on which I focused my capacities on were worthy or not!!!). Now, it takes me longer to understand something, I get tired quicker or more impatient quicker, I tend to stop thinking before I should, I am lazy in thinking about the satellite issues even though what I KNOW at 28 is FAR greater than what I knew at 17.

But yeah, if I ever have kids; I'm going to find someone who can teach them all this.