Can We Study Without a Teacher?
Tags: Online Education, Edtech, Education, Teachers, Language Learning

by Alexander Laryanovskiy, Managing Partner at Skyeng

Photo: Pixabay

The biochemistry of our brain makes us learn and be lazy at the same time. Why has this never been an issue in the course of evolution and how can we benefit from it?

The balance of curiosity and procrastination

Learning is an incredibly energy-consuming process. One third of all our energy is spent on brain power. And procrastination we always complain about and unsuccessfully fight with is just a logical consequence of the fact that our brain doesn’t want to waste any extra energy. We need it for survival, and we are programmed to save it.

Yet, we are born with such a thing as curiosity. Any interesting task or a chance to research something new releases dopamine, the hormone of pleasure. We have this learning mechanism in us, that’s why we like to find out new things.

So, our brain pushes us towards learning and encourages us to be lazy at the same time. Why does this happen and how does it affect the learning process?

Our brain consists of a huge number of neural networks that process information. We have external sensors — sense organs that constantly translate data to the brain. Our brain uses this data to predict what’s going to happen the next second. All the calculating abilities of our brain work together to predict the future — what exactly will be happening the next second. The closer the future is to the present, the more important it is to us.

For example, someone is sitting down on a chair. Their brain is collecting data from the whole body and assuming that in a few seconds the person will still be sitting. If the chair suddenly cracks, this person will jerk because the brain has made a mistake. The brain likes when its assumptions match the reality and dislikes the opposite. That’s why it stimulates us to improve its predictive function. Learning helps the brain clarify the future, improves this model.

Let us repeat this thought once again and slower. We are evolutionarily programmed to learn things that our brain considers as useful to predict the future. And when the educational service doesn’t work according to this scenario, we lose motivation.

What is actualization and why do we need it?

The biochemistry of the brain allows us to be our own teacher — so learning without a teacher is essentially possible. People are never lazy to look for the information they find interesting and important. We call it actualization.

The information that helps our brain improve its predictions is regarded as useful. And while receiving this information, our brain almost never pushes us towards procrastination. For example, if you promise a teenager to teach him or her how to flirt with people on Tinder in English, nothing will stop them from studying this topic carefully. You can even distract them — they will still finish the lesson.

Self-education works well when we know exactly why we need this information and are sure that we will be able to use it very soon — not in 20 years but today or tomorrow. The problem is that we don’t always make the right decision about what we actually need.

So we need someone to help us set a goal. Children need this all the time: a 5-year old doesn’t understand why he needs to learn how to read and write. Someone has to explain all the benefits of these skills to him. For example, tell him that he can go to a shop and exchange money for something really cool and nobody will lie to him. This kind of actualization can be easily understood by a child.

That’s why in primary school, when children learn applicable skills — reading, writing, calculating — they have no problems studying. Their knowledge is actualized immediately. They understand why they should learn now to read and write. Later they start having problems with goal-setting, because they have no idea why they should determine the discriminant of a quadratic equation or decompose the polynomial. Most adults don’t know that either.

And a lot of people don’t learn things that can improve their life dramatically just because they don’t know what exactly will improve their life. We need someone to correctly actualize the goal with us — to think things through together, imagine what tasks we may face in the future and give us a prepared educational plan. This is the main function of a teacher.

The role of a tutor appeared because we need help setting goals — in business, education, work, personal life. And when we are learning something, we need such a person, whatever we call them: a trainer, a teacher, a coach. They would understand what pieces of information will take us closer to our goal right now. This is the task for a teacher today. Here at Skyeng, for example, this is what we train our teachers to do — to identify the students’ goals and keep up their interest to study. You can find the explanations for grammar rules on your own. But to explain if you are going in the right direction and which information at this stage you need most — this can be only done by a teacher.

This is the only way to make our brain enjoy studying — bring information to the practical level. Learned it — used it — it worked. Here it is — happiness, here are hormones, the brain awards us for useful knowledge.

The knowledge of what a bisector looks like does not change anything in your life. But if you do something with the help of the bisector, then you feel delighted and understand that everything was not in vain. Therefore, the task of a teacher today is not to read a textbook aloud, but to teach how to apply knowledge.

If I could teach all the teachers in the country one thing, that would be it. Put. Knowledge. Into action.