Remember what's it like not to know - Part 2

This entry continues what we were talking about last week...

I had an instructor in my flight training who had difficulty remembering what it was like when he started flying. I’d ask him for an alternate explanation to whatever he was teaching me but he could only repeat what he had said originally, which I didn’t comprehend or I wouldn’t have asked for clarification. He couldn’t see that I was having trouble grasping the concept. He didn’t understand that repetition works fine when we’re tying to remember but it’s useless in restating something that doesn’t make sense the first time.

When I was learning how to land the plane, which is one the most challenging parts of flight training, I asked him where I should be looking – out the front of the plane, out the side, or at the instrument panel. When should I round out - the moment when you change the plane from pointing down toward the runway to pulling it back so that the back tires land first? He said that I should look ahead at the runway until I got the right ‘look.’ What look? He said I’d get it. Probably true but, what was the look I was going for? I needed a visual, a picture to look at back at the hangar after the lesson. Or, perhaps a video from the cockpit perspective. Or, at least a few landings where he was flying and would say to me, “See what the runway looks like right now? That’s the ‘look!’ ” That’s what someone who doesn’t know needs.

When I taught math, I, of course, always used the proper terminology – quadratic formula, Pythagorean Theorem, and so on – but I always coupled the terms with alternative descriptions and often a real world connection. What is the Pythagorean Theorem? It’s the relationship between the sides of a right triangle. Why should they care? They might want to fit something diagonally through a doorway or take a shortcut from school. They may be designers or builders. To teach this formula, to teach anything, we have to step out of our roles as authorities on the subject and remember the time when our subject was as new to us as it is now for our students.