Full Immersion Learning

A recent picture that showed some Italian senator advocating the importance of writing and reading on paper produced many shocked comments.

Now, it is important to note that such senator is actually part of a government that I would not endorse, given its many other very debatable, to say the least, initiatives… but on this one we fully agree. Why ?

Using our body fully connected to reality and to our brain is something that makes us the peculiar kind of animals we are among all other types. We can think and draw without the help of any other external device, a finger in the sand is enough to produce a masterpiece of art as well as to write the Maxwell equations and their most complex analytical solution.

Other animals can do even better than us, solving structural and hydraulics problems by building dams or by solving social and logistic problems by digging tunnels or nests of many different kinds, still without external help. We went to the Moon exclusively with our intelligence and some very basic tools, a slide ruler was enough, but now it seems we need to spend astonish amounts of energy just to parrot our own language and we call such pathetic efforts “intelligent”.

Mind you, it is ok to use new tools as long as we are not losing the skills with the old ones, especially if they are still integral parts of our body; that is why every time I can I encourage the youngest people to try using pens and pencils on paper or chalks on the blackboard, if they are so lucky to still have one. They, and everybody else, should always make the little effort of drawing a sketch or writing a sentence by hands before sitting in front of a keyboard and mouse or, even worse, asking silly questions to a smartophonic appendage.

Only after such basic efforts, then yes, we can make full use of all possible artificial tools while always looking with the greatest respect at what we can achieve without them.

So, I agree totally with that senator on this specific topic.

That is the same reason why, a few years ago, I was teaching some kids how to draw a parabola with string and chalk, not even from the geometrical law of the curve, but by obtaining its definition and the corresponding drawing method from the purpose itself of the parabola as focusing device for parallel incoming rays of light.

So when those kids finally built a sun concentrating mirror with cardboard and kitchen aluminum foil and could feel with their hands the heat in the focus of the parabola hopefully they did learn something for the whole life… not just a diagram from a dry formula or a sentence churned by a bot ready to be immediately forgotten because of the ease with which it was obtained.