FMF - Friends of Minerals Forum, discussion and message board

[Ed Huskinson]

An interesting point Tracy ( https://www.mineral-forum.com/message-board/viewtopic.php?p=6065#6065 ), and one that I had not considered. There are people out there who do not want to learn from a book, preferring practical "hands-on" experience. Grappling with an abstract concept, trying to puzzle it out by reading, looking at phase diagrams or drawings of models, well, that just doesn't interest them. It's not a learning disability. Such folks (and I am one of them), learn quickly if allowed to manipulate an object, turning it over in one's hands. This is called kinesthetic reinforcement. It's why the Krantz models make it so much easier for me to visual the twinned crystal (or whatever). Calculus? Had to make 3 runs at it to get by. Mineralogy? Aced with no problem, due to kinesthetic reinforcement. And now I have no problems with mineralogical manipulations in my head, but that's because I've dealt with the subject for so long. Stereonets? Well, I'd have to review a bit, but can still make my way, depending on the challenge.

So the point that I am taking from the discussion is that there are those who simply enjoy minerals for what they are (the physical appearance, the eye appeal, those things) and then there are people who take it a step beyond that, and try to learn what they can about the specimen or specimens in questions, and then of course there are folks out there who are compuncted to learn everything they can about the rocks and mineralogy (or petrology or petrography, whatever the discipline).

Bottom line: we all enjoy the things (pieces, specimens, minerals, crystals, rocks {call it what you will}), and our enjoyment thereof is limited only by the extent of our involvement. Some are more committed (or perhaps should be) than others, but we all share the common bond of enjoyment. What Thomas Moore calls "...our harmless obsessive benevolent common concern." What a magnificent turn of phrase, eh?

Thanks Tracy for pointing this out to me. There can be enjoyment without wholesale full-on study.

Later,

Ed

[Tracy]

Appreciate your post Ed. I'm a kinesthetic learner like you and a strong supporter of the I"i'll show you then you show me" approach to teaching. I am also an auditory learner and retain more of what I hear than what I read. Which is not to say that my house is devoid of minerals/mineralogy books, or that I never read or consult them. And, just in case I gave the wrong impression, I am an active subscriber to both R&M and MR....

No, it's not a learning disability. It's simply how my brain is wired.

- Tracy

[Peter]

Ed and Tracy

I think to be Kinesthetic is the greatest gift of all. I translate it simply to be sensitive, it is to touch, smell, sound and visual sensitivity etc. If you have it, you have it, and if you do not... probably very difficult if not impossible to learn.

A few weeks ago I tought a 15 year old girl, who is very kinesthetic, chemistry and physics during three times 1 hour. The past year she had never ones passed an exam in these subjects and was going to have to redo her 9th grade.

She had had between 1 and 4 on every test where 5/6 is the limit of passing and 10 is the maximum.
I simply listened to her and tought her from her way of taking in and understanding matters. She got 9 in Chemistry and 7 in physics! What a happy girl!

I think we need to select teachers for their abilities instead of some credits on paper.
By the way, I did not need to see many post by you to know your sensitivity.

[Tracy]

Thank you Peter. And congratulations to you and your young student on her success! Sounds like you are an excellent teacher.

- Tracy

[nurbo]

To my mind the thing about kinesthetics is it teaches in a very practical and real way which is ideally suited to mineralogy, you can pick up a crystal and turn it in your hands and physically see many things about it from which you can learn. These same features can also be expressed using ways which to many are just too abstract to understand, with talk of rhombohedrons, c-axis, twinning on (001) etc etc, some people will be put off by that, it can alienate some individuals as it can seem quite esoteric. A couple of years ago I was teaching maths in a college, it amazed me how many students struggled with concepts which are part of their everyday life because they have no way of relating them to real things and situations, in order to further the minerological aspect of collecting I believe we need to mix the practical physical and visible aspects of minerals with the more abstract language of the minerologist.

For example I was talking to a woman who ran a fish and chip shop who maintained that she could "Never do algebra", I asked her the cost of 2 fish, 3 portions of chips and a carton of peas and without needing to use a calculator or look at a price list she immediately gave me the correct cost, I explained that she had just done some multi variant algebra and she looked stunned by the realisation that algebra is in fact a part of the real world and furthermore that she used it everyday of her working life. She had never before made the connection.

These days when I get the opportunity to show my collection off to visitors I always try and use the physical forms of the specimens I let them handle to get across some minerology, I like the idea of sneakily educating people ;-)

[Matt_Zukowski]

Good job Nurbo - i think too many people hear the words math or science and they freak out when no such freaking is necessary. My neighbor is a 67 year old woman who I have taught quite a bit of personal finance and science to. She gets it when i tie stuff to the real world and then usually exclaims that it wasn't so hard.

[Peter Megaw]

The irony of the title of this thread...invoking jargon instead of direct language ("hands-on") is priceless...especially considering that the participants are bemoaning the difficulty of grasping concepts indirectly (through visual, audio, or mental abstraction). I am surprised Ed did not write his comments in heiroglyphics (to which I know he has been exposed) since they are doubtless more easily kinesthetically grasped...but perhaps he's struggling with the 5,000+ character keyboard required for this.?

BTW: I'm a kinesthetic learner too, with academic calculus and mineralogy experiences closely mirroring Ed's (thank the Gods that I recognized the former could be taken pass/fail to avoiding trashing my GPA). This is probably why geology/mineralogy was also such a great fit for me professionally...it is very concrete and very much based on what one can see and touch...it came almost intuitively to me. In contrast, I well remember a fellow student who could grind his way through the book learning, but ground to a complete halt in the field...completely unable to convert what he'd read into what was in front of his eyes or in his hands. (He has risen to a high level of academic administration, so I guess it worked out...unless you have to go to him for funding for your field project).

[Les Presmyk]

If there is anyone whom I know that would take a stab at writing in heiroglyphics, it would be Ed. However, I would much more impressed if he (or you Peter) tried to do so using the Mayan.

So, if we are all three approaching being barely literate in calculus (by the way, as an engineer we did not have the option of taking it pass/fail so my grades in differential equations did greatly affect my GPA) why does Terry Wallace, Steve Smale and Gene Meieran put up with us?

Anyway, now I have a term to describe why I learn so much quicker when I can hold something in my hands or at least liken an abstract idea to something that is physical.

[Ed Huskinson]

Thank you Les and Pete for your kind words. At least I think they are kind words, they're sort of abstract, abstruse if you will, so I am having trouble getting my head around their meaning.

And Pete, the only reason I am familiar with the term kinesthetic reinforcement is because of Aleta. As a 2nd grade teacher, she has been made to suffer through seminars on the concept. Although "hands on" is indeed more to the point, it lacks the panache of the KR thing, don't you think?

Hieroglyphys. Hmmmm. I'll see what I can come up with.

Later,

Ed

[Peter Megaw]

Les: are you sure they do put up with us? Actually, I suspect that if Steve could only put up with folks who understand math at his level, he would be pretty close to talking to himself.

Ed: Doesn't matter how one picks up the jargon...its that they perpretrate it. KR sounds like some one with a tenuous academic job looking to sound more erudite than they really are.

It's one thing to use shorthand to foster communication within a group of cognoscenti (think about what keystone, thumb, or wilbur would mean to a non mineral collector) and another thing altogether to use jargon as a barrier to communication and understanding because one's thoughts are so underwhelming.

Eschew Obfuscation!!!!

[Tracy]

...and I too suffered through 7 higher math courses en route to getting my engineering degree (I'm still not exactly sure how this morphed into a toxicology PhD and career). I had a classmate who could draw 3-D structures for every "X-Y-Z" formula I threw at him, without even stopping to think about it. I would take the drawings back to my room and stare at them trying to match the image to the equation, mostly without success.

There are plenty of people who do better with "hands-on" learning (I am setting the jargon aside for Peter's sake) than with textbooks. The only point I wanted to make is that, for those individuals, doing and touching are better than reading. The fact that so many avid collectors didn't think of subscribing to journals might simply be because they wouldn't learn enough by reading them to justify the subscription costs. And there's no question that subjects like mineralogy and crystallography are well-suited to the hands-on learners - all the more reason why these collectors would prefer touching and handling things over the more challenging "book-knowledge."

Was I bemoaning my inability to perform mental abstraction? I didn't think so. I said that I learn more by listening and handling/doing than by reading. Maybe you are picking on Ed now and, not knowing most of you personally, I'm missing the joke...?

- Tracy

[Peter Megaw]

Tracy...I picked up this thread somewhere in the middle so I did not have the full background...and yes, there is an in-joke here with picking on Ed. I went to school with him and one of our profs gave us our grades and comments in heiroglyphics..,it was part of his effort to get us to seek out and appreciate our predecessors in our field. To quote Goethe "Everything has been thought of before, the difficulty is to think of it again"

My intention was not to sidetrack the discussion...as I said, I too suffered from what was deemed a learning disability, but which should more accurately be called a teaching disability given the school system's limited vision and apparent comfort with teaching to the 75% who think the way the curriculum-meisters do. I just enjoyed the joke inherent in the language used to "dumb up" the realities of hands on learning by cloaking it in 50-cent word verbiage. Taking a broader perspective, perhaps we should be grateful for this since we're now the beneficiaries of having undernourished brain sectors that we can devote to something really worthwhile...like mineral specimen collecting and appreciation...rather than having our hard drives clogged with vestigial partial differential equations.

So now the only question is how we choose to load up the memory we have available. It's never too late to learn a new language....

[Tracy]

Ohhhhh - now I understand. I kinda figured this was all in fun when Ed's message came through (he posted while I was writing, so I didn't see it before my own). Thanks for clarifying.

[Peter]

Did anyone read How Mumbo Jumbo Conquered the world?

My daughter just graduated, The rector of the University of Luxembourg gave a short speach, in three parts directed TO THE STUDENTS! Excellent, with a very mature selection of topic, words choosen, fully understandable for THEM.

A second speach by a square headed, completely bureaucratic person.... my dear, not a sincere word, only bla bla. I am sorry, but a disastreous talk. No sensitivity.

I was listening all through. Lots of words, no contents. A cold personality,not a word to the students, only wording to try to impress people and to make an image of "superiority" because this poor person needed to boast "its" own ego, or at least try to. Mamma mia.
When you hear such you wonder how in the year 2009 we could still have some people like this at high positions. We have not come so far in development as we would like to think ......

Now, time for some field fun! I can already feel that crystal in its hiding place!
I dug many nice crystal lined pockets as a child where I am right now!