The Power of an Idea

The first one to appear was Jacob Barnett's: Forget What You Know (available on youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uq-FOOQ1TpE). The key idea behind the talk is it's not the school learning what makes a difference, and if you want to succeed badly you need to have your own unique perspective. Now I don't know how about you, but my idea of resting preferably does not include finding out all the tremendous effort was in vain. Unfortunately there was no escape from facing the daunting idea, despite the talk being arguably controversial. The only way was either to disprove or to accept.

Here's what I've come up with. Jacob illustrates the claim on two great men, sir Isaac Newton and Albert Einstein. In both cases there was a point where they had to stop learning (accepting information from outside) and start using their own devices to solve a problem. Similarly in our lives, we can expect the need to eventually start thinking for ourselves, contribute to the human knowledge with our own ideas and eventually become teachers for the next generation (hoping they'll put our findings in question also)..

With that much being said about independent thinking and innovative approach, worry not if you don't seem to be the next Albert Einstein. For there is one thing Jacob didn't quite mention - the (hu)mankind nowadays works as a team and there exists theory due to Belbin describing several roles that are required for a team to work effectively. Now both Newton and Einstein happen to be the plants according to Belbin - the creative and inspired person at the beginning. The good news is there is a long way to go in each project from the initial idea to the finish, creating opportunities for other people. The bad news is that unless you're the plant yourself, don't expect to get ridiculously famous.

Still, the talk points out one important aspect - it is much easier to learn than to create, and hence we want to learn for as long as possible. This is indeed a problem, since in order to make learning most efficient we need to combine (1) learning from others and (2) thinking and trying for ourselves. I'll give an example from maths, but I believe it does generalize to other fields of human study too. If we were to invent the entire maths from scratch, most people would barely come up with fractions. On the other hand, you don't learn much maths by reading the solutions only, not to mention you don't create new maths (and become ridiculously famous).

My point is, we should combine the two phases much more frequently - by doing exercises before the next maths lesson, by thinking about philosophy ideas outside the classroom, by trying to apply physics laws in real life situations. Our lives, on the contrary, often seem to have one learning phase (with very little applying) and one applying phase (with very little learning). It appears to me the (west) Anglo-American approach to education actively leads students to question findings and ideas, achieving great results in humanities. On the other hand the (east) European education puts emphasis on broad knowledge overall and profound understanding in natural sciences.

Finally, I would like to leave you with the following: do your homework, but think about what you're doing, and not only about that. Who knows, maybe you're the next plant.