Tutoring and the Feynman Learning Technique

I saw a post recently on LinkedIn that highlighted the Feynman Learning Technique. In short, this technique states that in order to learn something adequately, you have to be able to explain it to yourself in terms that a 5 year old would understand. As you learn more and more in life, it obviously becomes increasingly difficult to fully explain every topic to a 5 year old. However, I do believe that most topics in life can be effectively communicated to a junior higher.

I have started to volunteer as a tutor again recently. I have found that doing this gives me a lot of joy, to help coach and teach others. Additionally, it is a good practice of my empathy, understanding how the brain of another works, while allowing me to practice the “Feynman Learning Technique” on different topics.

For a lot of the people that I have tutored, I think that “not understanding” is a misnomer. For a lot of topics in high school and college, I had a hard time “understanding” them. I remember struggling a lot with polynomials in high school, and the laws of inductions in college’s discrete mathematics.

The way that my brain operates, it tends to ask more questions when it sees answers. This often left me feeling confused about a topic. But I realized that a lot of the people who are “smart” or “good at school” have brains that aren’t oriented toward asking questions. They tend to be good at following processes and repeating them. This is not bad, it’s just a different skill.

I believe that a lot of really “creative” and out-of-the-box thinkers struggle deeply with school. They ask so many questions about things, they are often confused. This confusion can lead them to become unwilling to accept the practices that are taught to them.

Now, this is not to say all people who struggle with school are hidden creative geniuses, and not all people who succeed at school are process-oriented thinkers. I just think that the way our educational system is designed, it tends to award one type of thinker more than another.

And I don’t know how I would design it differently, it is hard — if not impossible — to award creative thinking with external incentives. It is also hard — if not impossible — to measure creativity. But I think that the tragedy lies in the lack of belief that some “lost” creative thinkers have in their own abilities.