Vinaire's Blog

Reference: Course on Subject Clearing

The Situation

A person drops out of High School because he is faced with confusion in his schooling that seems to be increasing exponentially. He feels hopeless about learning. He can’t see any benefit from continuing in school. So he drops out.

What underlies that confusion are the holes in his understanding. There may be just a few holes in Kindergarten that, if not resolved, become significant by the end of the elementary school. Then, if they are still not addressed, they multiply and become substantial by the end of the middle school. Still not handled, these holes increase exponentially during the high school years until the student starts to drown in the resulting confusion.

The student’s attention is so fixed on the debilitating confusion that the underlying holes become invisible to him. He finds that the teachers and the after-school help are unable to help him with his confusion. All those lessons in the class he attends, just seem to add more to his confusion. He finds himself fighting a losing battle.

The student, and others trying to help him, focus on such holes “horizontally” at his grade level (see the graph above). But the solution does not lie in that direction. It lies in the direction of earlier grades. As you move down toward earlier education, the holes seem to merge into fewer holes. Thus, it becomes possible to trace all that confusion at the top to just a few holes at the bottom.

The cause of the massive confusion of a high school dropout is traceable to just a few holes in his early exposure to the subject.

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The Difficulty

Will it be helpful if the student can make this logical connection between the confusion at the top to the holes at the bottom? Will he experience relief? That is the theory.

But, in general, the student is so overwhelmed by his present confusion that the holes from his early schooling are not visible to him. You cannot ask him to review the early parts of his schooling. This is unacceptable to him.

Yes, the cause of the confusion “at the top” can be traced to the holes “at the bottom,” but there is no way to trace it without the cooperation of the student. The path of confusion along which to trace the holes is locked inside the student. The student cannot access those holes on his own. One-on-one troubleshooting works but it takes time, and it is a hit and miss affair.

The student is so confused that he cannot trace the path from his confusions to the underlying holes in his earlier education.

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The Possibility

All subjects start from some fundamental premise. From that premise a subject develops along logical lines. A good example is the subject of mathematics. Mathematics starts with counting, adding is “counting together,” subtraction is “reverse addition,” multiplication is “repeated addition,” division is “reverse multiplication,” and so it continues. When one talks about holes in understanding, one is really talking about missing grasp of a step in the logical structure of a subject.

A high school dropout cannot even describe what he needs help with, because he is pretty much confused about everything. When he needs help he cannot even put together his questions properly. He needs some firm context within which to formulate his questions. Maybe he can spot what he is missing if we present the outline of the subject to him in a logical sequence from its earliest premise.

The logical structure of a subject allows us to develop a context using which the student can discover the holes in his earlier education.

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The Experiment

A series of lectures were designed to provide the student with a proper context so he could formulate his questions. The lectures, very simply, introduced the broad purpose and scope of mathematics. They described various parts of mathematics. Then within that context the common area of trouble was identified as fractions. The subject of fractions was then approached by defining the fractions broadly. Simple exercises were provided that focused on the logical structure of fractions. 

This had an interesting effect on the students. They started to formulate questions about what was not clear to them. This was the start of a wonderful dialog that provided direction for subsequent lectures. The lectures followed the logical structure of mathematics while answering questions. From fractions, the lectures continued on division, factors, prime numbers, etc., and the interest of the students kept increasing and the questions kept coming. 

As lectures continued on this journey of discovery the hopelessness of the students started to diminish. They were more interested. Actually, this increasing interest was the indicator that the lectures were tracing the confusion correctly. This led to the following solution.

The way to trace back the confusion is to generate a “Q &A” dialog that closely follows the logical structure of the subject.

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The Proposal

The proposed solution is simple. Restructure the study materials at primary and middle school level such that they follow the logical structure of the subject. This was done for the subject of mathematics as follows.

Level 1: Primary School Review

Level 2: Middle School Review

So far these materials have been used in a private tutoring environment to handle student’s confusions at primary and middle school levels. The results have been fascinating. Not only the confusions of the students gets handled rapidly, they also become more interested in the subject of mathematics.

The approach used to develop these materials also led to the philosophy of Subject Clearing. One student who continued to be tutored through all four years of High School was also made familiar with the structured approach of subject clearing. Mathematics was his least favorite subject. He not only aced in Mathematics but in all other subjects as well. He truly developed confidence in his ability to learn.

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The Solution Summary

The solution, therefore, involves the following steps, which helps the student become a SELF-LEARNER.

(1) The development of study materials that are structured logically, and
(2) Training the student in the use of Subject Clearing.

A self-learner is one who, on his own, can establish connection between his confusion and the relevant hole in his understanding. He can then proceed to fill that hole by searching for, and finding, the right material.

A self-learner knows how to clean up any confusion in real time so the holes don’t accumulate and become harder to handle later. His curiosity to learn, therefore, never diminishes, and he does not have to be pushed.

The effort of producing self-learners out of failing students may be organized into units called Self-Learning Clinics or SLCs. An SLC would be tasked with turning the “hopelessness about education” into an “eagerness to learn” within weeks.

More specifically, the purpose of a Self-Learning Clinic (SLC) is to help school drop-outs become effective self-learners.

The next step is to draw up a blueprint for the SLC in such a way that it becomes a reality with very little effort. See the section on Self-Learning Clinics of Subject Clearing.

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