Puzzling Through Life

One of the things which struck me most in law school was that those who asked the most questions generally got the best marks.

Now, there may be some false correlations there, including that those people became “the teachers’ pets” and were therefore favoured. I think not, because some of the questions were tough ones, not always complimentary to the professors’ views.

What I think is really the case is that those who learn best are the ones who puzzle most. That is, they don’t consider their minds as mere vessels into which data is poured, but they need to understand the “why”, not just the “what”. They don’t accept new data as something to be passively warehoused in a brain cell, but something to be understood, parsed, carefully catalogued, and put on the shelf where it belongs, along with ideas of the same ilk. And they also need to understand what it’s not like, what it contrasts with, what it complements, and when and why it doesn’t apply. In other words, they need to own the new information in a way that gives it potential.

Now, of course, this is all so much easier when you’re learning the stuff you love. When you’re in a class or researching subject matter which is of little or no interest to you, you’ll grudgingly give the new data random warehouse space in your brain until something more interesting comes along or you have the test out of the way.

Here’s the funny thing, though. How often do we find ourselves sitting in lectures or church or conferences where the speaker has the knack of intriguing you with puzzles and oddities and apparent non-sequiturs and deliberate absurdities which get you thinking, “Now, wait a minute. That’s weird. What’s going on here?”

Suddenly, even in a program in which you would not otherwise be interested, you are interested. Your brain begins to work and to puzzle and to sort things out into useful piles. And you learn.

Now, if this is true, what does it tell us about communicating and educating?