How to teach a skill you don’t have yourself

I was a history major in college, and we memorized dates and people. But kids don’t do that anymore. They organize all the information into themes. We punted on textbooks and capitulated to AP study guides that teach to the test.

The last chapter of AP history is globalization. (Note to overachievers: this topic falls under the theme nationalism vs global identity.) The book says globalization is old: “Humans have always engaged in cultural exchange, dissemination of knowledge and the trade of goods and services.” What makes our Internet Age different is how fast the exchange happens.

And the question is, how to keep track of it.

I am always thinking about how to keep track of information because I have all sorts of links that I keep for blog posts.

For example, here’s a link to a patent Amazon just received. It’s for human cages. The human sits in a cage and a robot carries the human around giving the human orders to follow.

The key to having a great internal system for sorting information is to not care. I have too many emotions about the information I read – fear of losing a link slows me down.

I see my son getting overwhelmed with the amount of information he’s dealing with for test taking in college. I wanted him to spend his childhood reading fun, interesting stuff, curled up on the sofa with hot chocolate in his hand and the dog in his lap. Instead he suffocated under flashcards for physics and calculus graphs.

I want to teach him how to sort information quickly, but instead I’m writing this post, trying to find a faster system for myself, and all I can think about is that maybe instead of organizing links I should organize pictures. Maybe all blog posts should have two pictures so that I don’t lose the good ones.

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