How Do Humans Learn?

Rogelio Valdés

Oct 1, 2020

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The best way to learn is to build our own knowledge. I remember that as a child I hated subjects where I had to memorize large amounts of content. Memorizing the periodic table in chemistry felt useless to me. Studying every date and every name in the history book felt like a waste of time. I think those were the only subjects I genuinely did not enjoy in elementary and middle school.

Surprisingly, during my first two semesters of high school, history became my favorite subject. It was the first time I had to really think in a class like that. It was no longer enough to memorize dates and names, in fact that was almost useless, because now we had to analyze what had happened. I remember very clearly that during the first semester we studied the first civilizations and how their cultures developed. We understood how social classes evolved and how that connected with what still happens today. In the next term, we studied the history of Europe from the so-called discovery of America through the Second World War, and we began to understand how conflicts developed and how they still influence our countries today.

That year, the teacher did not care whether we could recite dates. What mattered were the motives behind each historical figure. She created dialogue and graded us based on our arguments, even when we defended something different from what the book said. In the end, books are also interpretations and analyses written by historians. Of course, if you wanted to challenge the author, you needed strong arguments. It was not easy, but it was valid.

Why did I hate history before, but then it became my favorite subject?

Some people say it all depends on the teacher, but it is not only the teacher. It is also the teaching method being used. Years later, I discovered a theory that describes the different ways human beings learn and orders them by effectiveness. It did not surprise me at all to see that rote memorization sits at the bottom of the pyramid because it is the least effective method. What is interesting is that when you use the methods at the top of the pyramid, you usually end up using the lower levels along the way anyway.

Bloom’s taxonomy and learning

For example, in order to analyze a historical event, we first have to know and remember what happened, and we have to understand it well enough to explain it. I do not know if this is true for everyone, but I realized that the subjects I enjoyed most throughout my education were the ones that worked with the highest levels of that pyramid.

That is why when we designed our methodology for teaching finance, we knew children needed to create their own plans and strategies for using money inside the games we invented. When we teach programming, we guide children to create their own video games. It is simply a more effective way to teach, and for some reason the challenge and complexity also make it more enjoyable.