Purlieu of Esoterism

“I am a myelin farmer.”  That phrase tastes very interesting.  It’s a very cool concept; it sounds like something to base a book around.  Specifically a book about farmers on the planet Xenon that grow purple corn that gives you the power to time travel or something.  The problem is that myelin isn’t a made-up word, nor is there tangible fertilizer for it. You can’t buy myelin seeds and there’s not exactly a market for you to “sell your crop,” per say.

            Myelin; that is, the stuff that insulates neural pathways to speed transmissions through the brain to make more-used connections more efficient; is used by Daniel Coyle in The Talent Code as a vehicle for explaining the learning process, specifically in cases of “repeatable skills that don’t depend on physical size.” (pp. 11n)  The point is that myelin only applies itself to well-used pathways.  The more well-used, the more myelin, simply put.  And it really is that simple.  This stuff is the reason habits are formed and are so difficult to break.

            Understanding myelin though is just the first step in quickly understanding the learning process.  In a sense, it’s impossible for someone to do a skill exactly perfectly from the beginning because their brain just hasn’t wired itself to do that skill yet.  The trick is that it’s really easy to wire the brain to do said skill incorrectly and once the incorrect pathway in myelinated, it never becomes un-myelinated.  Hence the reason it takes so much longer to adjust bad habits after they’ve been formed.  The primary preventative measure in this case is to take tiny, detail-oriented steps and constantly make adjustments that fit the ideal goal.

            The next step is, once a skill is done correctly, repeat it ad nauseum.  This process, in a way, is the fertilizer for myelin.  Constant tiny adjustments through bunches and bunches of repetitions is what Coyle calls “deep practice.”  It’s through deep practice that people learn a skill the most efficiently.  Yes, there are other ways to learn a skill, but the concept of deep practice has a tendency to be the most effective by far.

            In application to teaching, Coyle mentions a concept he calls “ignition” that pairs itself with deep practice.  Ignition is the motivators that create and sustain excitement for the skill set in students.  In the case of physical skills like music, dance, and sports, ignition often comes in the form of observing a more experienced person (that the student can relate to) perform.  Beyond that, ignition’s other forms are situations that say to the student “look how neat this is, with lots of time and effort you’ll be able to do this too!”  For many of the outliers among a skill group, this happens in part because of extremely adverse life situations such as early loss of a parent and harsh living conditions that tell a student it’s important that they perform well so they can change their situation.

            Coyle mentions four “virtues” of a great teacher.  All four carry the same value, but first is the most difficult to possess.  The first virtue is what Coyle calls “The Matrix,” which is the web of application-level knowledge of the subject matter along with improvisational teaching skills that can only come from many years of focused experience.  This is great to know about, but how does someone get there? What can a teacher practice to develop this skill?  All the pedagogical theory in the world can do very little to prepare a teacher for the organic interaction between themselves and a student.

            The next virtues are “Perceptiveness” and “The GPS Reflex.”  At its core, this is very simple: a teacher interacts with a student, gauges his or her reaction, and adjusts the interaction accordingly.  The problem is that this is such a vague and hazy notion it’s hard to know how to apply it.  If the student doesn’t understand a concept, spin it into a different mode of input to light up separate, hopefully stronger, cues.  Again, this seems straightforward.  In practice though it’s very difficult first of all to tell when a student doesn’t understand, second how to re-deliver the same information.

            The last virtue Coyle describes is something called “Theatrical Honesty.”  This seems like a convoluted way to say flamboyance or eccentricity.  Understanding how to deliver information to a student beyond just the way words are formed is kind of what this means.