104. The situation
[From Seth Godin, Stop Stealing Dreams http://www.squidoo.com/stop-stealing-dreams]
Real learning happens in bursts, and often those bursts occur in places or situations that are out of the ordinary. Textbooks rarely teach us lessons we long remember. We learn about self-reliance when we get lost in the mall, we learn about public speaking when we have to stand up and give a speech.
In Thinking, Fast and Slow by Nobel prize–winner Daniel Kahneman, we discover that we have two brains—the primordial, hot-wired, instinctive brain and the more nuanced, mature, and rational brain. When we celebrate someone who is cerebral or thoughtful or just plain smart, what we’re really doing is marveling over how much he’s managed to use his rational brain. This is the person who doesn’t take the bait and get into a bar fight, the one who chooses the long-term productive path instead of the shortcut.
It turns out, though, that none of this happens if we haven’t also trained our instinctive brain to stand down. When we practice putting ourselves into situations, we give the rational brain a better chance to triumph. That’s why you’d like the doctor who sees you in the emergency room to have years of experience. Why performance in debates improves over time. And why a mom with three kids is surprisingly more calm than one with merely one.
Practice works because practice gives us a chance to relax enough to make smart choices.
A primary output of school should be to produce citizens who often choose the rational path. And that’s going to happen only if we’ve created enough situations for them to practice in.
Tags: stopstealingdreams
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