HOW LEARNING CAN BE FUN (PT 1)

LEARNING IS FUN, A MUST. If you are not having fun in your learning, you
are in a deep shit; not only you will not learn anything but worst, you will be
living a dreadful life, especially if you are a learner or a student.
But this is the biggest challenge isnt? How can we turn something that has
been perceived by many and for so long, as the most BORING life-related
activity ever? Everybody eats, watch TV, play games and go to school. The
first three activities are always fun (except when youre sick) but never the
latter. But the TRUTH is, like any other life-related activities, LEARNING IS
FUN, SHOULD BE AND ALWAYS BE! There is no reason for it not to be.
Actually, LEARNING CAN BE FUN if the process of learning contains these
four aspects:
1. Easy
2. Driven by curiosity
3. Playful
4. Mathematics and Science
You might ask, Only these four? Are you sure?. Yes, positive, I would
reply.
LEARNING IS FUN when it is easy. Memorizing is difficult and the sole
reason for my ancient stance that LEARNING IS BORING; it is just too damn
difficult. But how can it be easy? Learning is easy if you can hold on to the
principle that makes up the argument in the first place. For example, 1+2 is 3,
10+20 is 30, 100+200 is 300, and so on. Easy isnt? It is easy because you
hold on to the principle of Addition; the rest is just the application of the same
principle, applied to an increasing value of numbers.
LEARNING IS FUN if we can be curious about it. Human are born with
curiosity and that what makes us human. I read (I couldnt remember and
dont bother to find the exact quote at this instance), Einstein once said One
without curiosity is as good as dead. But, the grand question remains, how
can we be curious in our learning? In my observation, we start to be curious
after witnessing some serial and recursive occurrences which leave us with
the feeling of wanting to know what will happen next. In simpler words, we get
curious when we start seeing patterns. This is it! We can be curious in our
learning if we can trace or show some trace of patterns within the argument,
making us wanting to know more.
LEARNING IS FUN when you can play with it. Playing is always fun, isnt?
But, how can we play in our learning? There can be two types of game that
we can play; Guessing game and Wanabe game. This Guessing game is
closely related to the previous discussion on pattern tracing. Once you traced
the pattern, then you guess whats going to happen next; thats how you play
it. For example, after reading some paragraphs on a topic and after you
traced some patterns out of it, you then guess what is going to be in the
upcoming paragraphs. Believe me, when you guess it right, you will be very
happy but if you guess it wrong you will still be happy because that what
game is all about, either win or lose, you will always get the high out of it. If
you keep doing this, believe me, you will get hook or addicted to these highs
and become knowledge addict.
Another game that we can play is the Wanabe game. Although this will sound
a bit kookoo, but believe me, it can really make a different. Let me give you an
analogy. What keeps a ten year old boy playing football for hours without
feeling tired is the imagination of being Messi. A guitar player will keep playing
for hours imagining himself as Gary Moore on Still Got the Blues. This is
therefore the reason for the compulsory watching of A Beatiful Mind, Pirate of
Silicon Valley, The Arrow and many more bibliographical movie imposed onto
my postgraduate students as well as the compulsory reading on Einstein,
Feynman, Imam Ghazali, Syed Hossein Nasr and alike. I can read for hours
because I am Feynman wanabe! It works you know!
Finally, LEARNING IS FUN if it contains mathematics and science because
these are the enablers of the first three aspects which we have just discussed.
Ahah! I Knew it you might say He is no difference than the others. Simply
because he understands a bit of math he thus said all these rubbishes.
Should not he know better that math and science is the father of all
BORINGNESS. Wait, I would say. I do understand your prejudice but if you
can bear with me, I will show you that mathematics and science, either they
kill the fun or they the ones that make LEARNING IS FUN.
Now, I would be like any other Malaysian philosophers who only know how to
be rhetoric in their writing and words if I leave this article without a concrete
demonstration on what have been said. So, I am going to demonstrate to you
what I practice in my Theory of Structures lecture. It is going to be a bit
technical though but dont worry; you still can follow even if you are not trained
in engineering. This is because, it is the story telling is what important, not
the equations. But, I am going to do this in Part 2, please wait for it.