Tapping the Potential of Young Learners

A strength that is discovered is worth the price of effort. But discovery is not a cake walk for a given student as it takes tremendous amount of patience. No prizes for guessing. It does take time. A student may find that he/she is putting a great deal of pressure in trying to tap the hidden areas of his/her mind trying eagerly to find out just where that spark lies. Effort is often not easy to comprehend for people who are creative because they do not notice the effort that they put in their art work. There is a misconception that hard work implies tiredness and exhaustion. But simply put if your interest and aptitude are in line then you may as a learner get so involved in the subject you are passionate about that you neither notice the energy that you are spending for it nor the time that has passed.

A learner needs to remember to minimize the effort involved. For this he/she can do well to discard the myths associated with the virtuosity of hard work. It is not as it seems. You do not have to force yourself to learn by literally squeezing your mind. All it takes is involvement in the subject in hand. How do you get that involvement? You are made to want to find out without deliberate strides on your part. The proportion of effort and inspiration has been under dispute with differing views on it. The reason for disagreement is that the older approaches insisted on hard work and glorified it even to the extent that one comes across many who brag about their tendency to put in extra effort.

Then there are talks of smart work. But even smart work is not necessarily inspiration and does not get involved. It is just a shorter path than hard work and is merely a convenient construct. It is important to acknowledge that the tutor has to inspire learners to cultivate an undying sense of curiosity in a subject. This is in the mind but is achieved through a phenomenon known as transference. Experience cannot be inherited but the inspiration behind one’s journey can indeed be transferred. This is the spirit that a tutor needs to instil in learners. By transference, latent talents of learners can be tapped to make learning an experience of flow that does away with the myth of aimless plodding.