The Bridge Between Physical and Mental Learning
“Let no one enter who is ignorant of geometry” read the inscription over Plato’s academy. The Ancient Greeks certainly had an appreciation for bringing domains of knowledge together. But just as important was their value on the physical abilities of their students. Gymnastics was considered an essential part of any education, not just something to let students blow off a little steam.
We’ve lost much of this perspective. All too often we approach the physical and mental as two separate spheres, built for separate purposes, inhabiting different worlds. But physical, mental, and the myriad other ways of knowing we possess are more intricately linked than we give credit. Indeed, learning physical and mental skills in conjunction makes the sum greater than its parts. Let me highlight this point with a few examples.
In his seminal book Mindstorms, MIT profressor Seymour Papert demonstrated that the skill of juggling could be learned by children within 20 minutes. How did he do this? Papert used concepts from computer science and programming, namely the concept of “debugging”, to help students isolate and correct issues individually. Through this model, students could use concepts from computing to accelerate the process of learning to juggle. However, this phenomenon was not a one way street. Papert also demonstrated that students — given a chance — would use an understanding of their bodies to help them intuit problems in programming, math, and science. In this way, physical and mental skills enriched each other far beyond the sum of their parts.
We can look to many examples besides juggling however. Capoeira can teach models of relaxation and flow for use in language learning. Running can teach models of slow progress for creative writing. Skiing can provide models for newtonian physics. I could go on, but the essential model is one of learning as a dynamic process, one that pulls from many areas of our experience.
Unfortunately, the usual tendency is to see learning as what happens inside a four-walled classroom, and experience as what happens outside of it. But I would argue that learning simply doesn’t exist without experience. When we say someone has a lot of “experience” with something, we really mean that they have learned a lot about something outside of traditional institutions. We need to bring that experiential learning into our learning environments, whether that experience is physical, mental, or any other way of knowing. We need to start approaching the human experience as a whole, from all its angles, mirroring the connective structure of the brain.
By providing different areas of experience to draw from, and highlighting similarities between them, we give students more material through which to construct their understanding. In contrast, by isolating mental learning from other parts of human experience, we prevent powerful avenues for understanding advanced and abstract concepts.
This is the true meaning of holistic education, not a haphazard collection of subjects, but learning through connection. Perhaps then a better inscription to place above our academies should simply read: “Let no one exit who is ignorant”.
