When we cover a piece of paper with marks we call writing, it is handy to have a traditional way of laying out the marks. We do have such a tradition and in many countries, the usual way is to have rectangular sheets of paper and to start on an upper left corner. We say we write from left to right and then when we run out of room, we jump back to the left edge again and write beneath what we have already written. Therefore, we are used to starting our reading at the same point. If the teacher or the message begins where we expect, a reader can jump down the page and see what we are going to be getting to later on. In many subjects, there is a sort of nest of ideas that interrelate. The basic ideas may not have a starting point but more resemble a clutch of pick-up sticks laying in a tangle.
If a beginner is introduced to such a subject in a linear way, he or she may naturally think of the first topic as foundational in a way that it is not. It may take several years of practice for such a beginner to get rid of the inappropriate feeling of that first topic being THE starting point and to better grasp that a group of basic topics all share the importance of supporting the subject.
It is not just writing on paper. When I make a presentation, the nature of time and of spoken language means I have to start somewhere. I could try to warn learners beforehand that all of the tools or topics of the coming hours are equally supportive and fundamental but there will still be a first topic. Often, that first topic is not well grasped until its codependent and interrelatedness is felt fully and naturally.
I have wondered if I could cut round paper handouts with pie-slice shaped descriptions of important basic topics and try to give out the paper in a way that gave successive students their piece with a different topic at the "top". Maybe if I had a short video explaining each fundamental topic and arranged each video to be given to a different portion of the group, we might undercut inappropriate biases toward or against the parts of the subject. After each video had been seen by a sub-group, all the sub-groups or teams could meet in a single large room with the task of instructing everyone present in the material of all the videos.
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Bill
Main blog: Fear, Fun and Filoz
Main web site: Kirbyvariety
