Rather than looking at all the different variations in people’s learning and processing styles, I want to draw a comparison between how we work, think, process now and how our ancestors did, to show how there are only 2 basic learning styles:
Linear/symbolic//verbal/farming
Lateral/literal/visual/hunter gatherer
Multi-Tasking.
We all go on about multi-tasking, but does this label cover one type of skill or two? Do hunters multi-task in a different way from farmers?
Do some of us today multi-task in one way but not in another?
Until the start of the modern education system, which was designed to ‘make people’s skills compliant to the industrial revolution’ (Edison Gene – Thomas Hartmann) people spelled words as they sounded, only a minority of people could read or write, trades were learned through apprenticeships, ‘universities’ gave a universal education rather than a specific one with a distractingly irrelevant secondary subject.
Or so it seems from what I’ve read.
Nature and Nurture, Both
Of course, with nurture playing a big part alongside nature, people have developed individually in all different ways according to their parents’ expectations, the enthusiasm of teachers, social background, gender, genes and experiences.
The dominant thinking style today tends to look for differences and myriad individual variations, to study these intellectually and label things, rather than find patterns of similarity to look for a solution to problems to sort them out.
Surely, we all want to do the best we can? Sometimes I wonder if we all do, or if more and more people have another aim which supersedes getting the best result for all involved.
My next post looks first at the nature of Farmer Mentality.
Dairy of A Nonny Moose 