Does information overload kill holistic learning?
Yesterday I downloaded and read Scott H Young’s eBook on holistic learning . He makes some very interesting points in it and along with his post on the subject is well worth a read.
Scott maintains that while it’s entirely possible to learn through memorization, very rarely will a student have a full knowledge of the subject and truly understand it.
While reading through the book I realised that I did, at one time, learn holistically. While I was at school I had no problem learning with very little study. I was able to absorb information without trying, much to the annoyance of many of my peers. It seems that at some point between then and now I’ve lost that ability. What I want to know is why?
This set me off on a little brainstorm and I have, I think, found the answer – or at least part of it.
While I was at school I took in information on a number of subjects (thirteen if I recall correctly), but there was a finite amount of information to absorb. I only learned a fixed amount of stuff in one day. I was happy learning what we were taught. I did, of course, supplement this with reading from books, newspapers and my experiences but the majority of what I learned came from lessons at school. I linked all this information together in massive mind-webs and was thus able to understand and recall it with ease.
When I started my A-Levels in 2003 I reduced the number of subjects I was studying. This gave me less seemingly unrelated concepts to link together in my mind-webs. In the absence of a broad subject range, I looked to the internet for information and discovered wikipedia and the blogosphere. Suddenly I had too much information to actually learn and instead started storing it, both in my head and on my computer. Even now, when I find a good article I save the URL for future reference, on the basis that I haven’t got time to take it all in now.
Upon starting my degree last year I reduced the areas which I was studying even further, and filled the space with more information from blogs and the web. Unfortunately, in tune with my reduced scope in school-based learning, I reduced the subjects that I read on the web. I now read about productivity and programming. That’s it.
It’s my considered opinion that this narrowing of my study areas combined with the vast amount of unlearnable information presented to me every day has led not only to a reduction in my general knowledge, but to a tendency to learn by memorization.
When I realized this it was like receiving a kick in the face from Bigfoot – no wonder I find it hard to learn and no wonder I lose interest in subjects quickly.
In conclusion I’d like to thank Scott for helping me to realize this and at the same time resolve to:
- Reduce the amount of information I try to learn.
- Stop hoarding information for “later reading”.
- Expand my learning into other areas.
I’m confident that by eradicating information overload and focusing on learning what I want to, I’ll be able to stop worrying so much. Perhaps I’ll find it impossible to reach that long-forgotten state of all-knowing confidence, but I can get a bit closer to it.