Re: [Phys-l] "Unlearning"

["Dan L. MacIsaac" <danmacisaac@mac.com>]

back on topic about that word "unlearning" itself that I like to think about so very much:

On Sep 10, 2010, at 6:25 PM, John Denker wrote:

> On 09/10/2010 03:12 AM, Dan L. MacIsaac wrote in part:
>
> > - whether anything can be "unlearned" at all 
>
> Habits can be changed.  For example, when people travel 
> from Britain to the US, we expect them to learn to drive
> on the right side of the road.  Some of them struggle
> with it more than others.
Sure, but you're not convincing me that "unlearning" exists.  Mental structures aren't overwhelmingly being erased --  but modified, extended and some aspects are suppressed -- the original stuff is ALL PRETTY MUCH STILL THERE.  When the people return to Britain they won't need to re-learn to drive from scratch, though they may have some inappropriate reactions at times.  They will not restart from zero.  

I agree that behaviors and skills can be more or less entrenched and that individual learning and reflexing training take place at different rates. I just don't agree that we regularly throw out earlier arrangements of conceptual structures we learned (as adults -- children, especially very young children do prune physical structures in their brains as they age).  I think more that mental structures are reformed, modified, extended and suppressed in some kind of evolutionary-like patterns as they compete and are selected to control the organism.  I like an evolutionary like model b/c it gets to the point that we evolve existing mental structures to create new ones, we rarely if ever get to start absolutely from scratch.  Kind of like the panda's thumb or having a breathing tube shared with a food intake -- horrible kludges, but we can only develop and use what we start with -- we don't get to go back  to a clean drawing board.

This rationale is kind of Piagetian -- theorizing about learning in humans from a biological (learning in animals) basis.  I'd be delighted if someone could point me towards more reading about evolutional models of learning.

> The point of this note is that in my experience, students
> can unlearn (or modify) an old idea more easily if they
> were warned -- from the very beginning -- about the
> limitations of the idea, so that they never become
> unduly attached to it.

Then this would be an implied or universal warning for all human learning.  My definition of (significant) learning always involves modifying  existing mental structures, varying only in mow much.   Though I certainly prefer and promote the learning of physics as including learning limitations (range and domain of the model) as you go along.  I think this is part of what real learning means to me -- not memorization.

Loving this conversation and thanks for your patience,

Dan M


Dan MacIsaac, Associate Professor of Physics, SUNY-Buffalo State College
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