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The easy method neuroscientists say is the best way to learn any new skill

We evolved to learn this way.

via Canva/Photos

A man trying to learn a new skill.

When you were in school, did you ever dread doing group assignments? Did you feel you’d much rather do the work independently than with a committee where there was always one person who wouldn’t pull their weight?

Well, even though those assignments may have been uncomfortable, there’s a good reason why your teacher put you in a group to write a report on the moons of Jupiter or to explain the lasting consequences of the Gold Rush. The big reason is that, according to neuroscientists, when we learn with others, we encode the information more deeply and feel more motivated to act.

A big reason is that you are discussing the material with others. You are also engaging with the material more actively, and active learning is shown to provide better outcomes.

“We work better when we are in a group, and we can share our ideas and refine our ideas with other people,” said Gillian Roehrig, a University professor in the Department of Curriculum and Instruction, told Minnesota Daily.

group projects, learning skills, learning studysStudents working on a group project.via Canva/Photos

However, social learning isn’t just something that can benefit us in 3rd-period science; it’s a tactic we can all use to learn anything, whether it’s taking a cooking class in a group setting, going to a Bible study where we exchange ideas with others, or taking flying lessons with a group of future pilots.

So, if there is a skill you’d like to pick up, it’d be best to take it in a class, primarily where you work closely with others, rather than an online class where it’s you and the computer screen.

Why do humans learn better in groups?

NeuroLeadership Institute posits that humans learn better in groups because we have evolved to encode social information automatically. After all, it has always been vital to our survival as individuals and species. “The more we feel connected to the group, the greater our chances of staying safe — and so over time, our brains have become more responsive to what we learn in the presence of a group,” Chris Weller at NueroLeadership Institute writes.

Learning within a group also helps us because we associate the new information with the social interactions that occur while working in the group. The new facts are encoded in our brains alongside memories of shared jokes or debates with another group member, which lead to a deeper understanding.

cooking stories, learning, learning studiesA group of people learning how to cook.

We are also more likely to go the extra mile in studying the information because of the social pressure to look good in front of the group. That way, social learning works like positive peer pressure, like when people pledge to work on goals together. A study found that you have a 65% chance of completing a goal if you tell someone else you’re committing to it. If you have regular check-ins with a partner, your chance increases to 95%.

According to Cornell University, social earning is also good for self-esteem, exposes people to diverse perspectives and improves higher-level thinking, oral communication and leadership skills.

In a world where more people are taking classes online and working from home, it’s important to remember how important it is to work together. Humans evolved to collaborate, so let’s be sure that as we embrace modern technology, we don’t forget that human connection is one of our greatest strengths.

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Education

Former teacher gets blunt about the 'denial' some parents have about their kids education

"They're more concerned about the optics…than about taking care of the child's needs."

@bodacious.bobo/TikTok

A former teacher breaks downt he "denial" some parents have about their kid's academic performance

Many kids are seriously struggling in school. According to US News, an estimated 49% of public students started off the 2022-2023 school year behind in at least one subject as last year. That’s only a small fraction better than the 50% of students behind in the previous year.

And while there are several factors contributing to this issue—recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic, a lack of resources for many public schools, a teacher shortage, etc.—several educators feel that a majorly overlooked aspect is the parents' involvement, or lack thereof, in their child’s education.

Recently, one former teacher bluntly stated that it was parents' “denial” that’s to blame. Odion, who now works as a flight attendant, made her case in response to another teacher asking parents “Why don’t y’all know that your kids aren’t performing on their grade level?” on TikTok.

In the original video, the teacher (@qbthedon) laments that even though he teaches 7th grade, most of them still perform on a 4th grade level, and, despite his efforts, those kids still move onto the next grade. The worst part is that the parents don’t seem to be aware that their kids are struggling.

@qbthedon Lets chat!! #fyp #viral #teachertok ♬ original sound - QBSkiiii

This lack of awareness and engagement dates back further than the pandemic years, says Odion, who taught Pre-K and Kindergarten in 2013.

Case in point: parent-teacher conference nights, where virtually no parent would show up. Odion then recalled one father who did attend with his daughter, called Tia for the story, but would not believe that Tia did not know the full alphabet.

"In kindergarten, you have to at least know, I think it was 80% of the 52 letters, as in uppercase and lowercase, and you have to be able to identify at random. So, I'm telling the dad that she barely knows 10 letters. And he's in denial. 'Nah, you know, she knows her letters,'" Odion says.

She then acts out that night, using a makeshift flashcard like she did to test Tia.

"I literally said, 'What letter is this?'” Odion says while holding up the letter “M.” “She said something that's not it. Put another one down. 'What letter is this?' She don't know it."

teaching

"I literally said, 'What letter is this?'”

@bodacious.bobo/TikTok

Even still, the dad insisted that Tia knew her letters, then eventually blamed Tia’s older brother, who, despite only being a sixth grader himself, was apparently “supposed to teach her.”

“It is not up to a child in elementary school, or middle school, or really any of your older kids, as someone who's an older child... It is not up to the kids to teach younger kids,” Odion says in the clip.

Using another example, Odion states that a fifth grader in her class was reading at a kindergarten level and could only process basic sentences like “I see you” and “I like to see.”

In this instance, the students should be held back in order to fully learn the year’s curriculum. But Odion argues that parents fight against it “because they are more concerned about the optics of a child being held back than actually taking care of the child's needs."

parenting

"Parents, y'all can't be backseat drivers about your child's learning."

@bodacious.bobo/TikTok

In this instance, the students should be held back in order to fully learn the year’s curriculum. But Odion argues that parents fight against it “because they are more concerned about the optics of a child being held back than actually taking care of the child's needs."

While the research shows that holding kids back a grade doesn’t necessarily improve their academic performance, and that there are pros and cons either way, the biggest point Odion seems to be trying to make is that parents need to be more proactive in their child’s education.

"Parents, y'all can't be backseat drivers about your child's learning. You have to help reinforce it at home. You put a kid in front of that phone or iPad whenever they come home, it better be on YouTube, and it better be learning about letters and sight words. You can't tell me you can't read to the kid. It takes 10 minutes to read to the kid. No one is that busy,” she concludes.

Watch the full video below:

@bodacious_bobo #stitch with @QBSkiiii ♬ original sound - Odion • $OdionE

This article originally appeared on 1.5.24

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Education

Watching kids do lightning fast mental math is both mesmerizing and mind-blowing

Their finger twitching looks random, but WOW is it impressive.

Digamarthi Sri Ramakanth/Wikimedia Commons

2003 UCMAS National Abacus & Mental Arithmetic Competition

In the age of calculators and smartphones, it's become less necessary to do math in your head than it used to be, but that doesn't mean mental math is useless. Knowing how to calculate in your head can be handy, and if you're lucky enough to learn mental abacus skills from a young age, it can be wicked fast as well.

Video of students demonstrating how quickly they can calculate numbers in their head are blowing people's minds, as the method is completely foreign for many of us. The use of a physical abacus isn't generally taught in the United States, other than perhaps a basic introduction to how it works. But precious few of us ever get to see how the ancient counter gets used for mental math.

The concept is simple and can be taught from a young age, but it takes a bit of time and practice to perfect. Watch what it looks like for basic addition and subtraction at lightning speed, though:

If you don't know what they're doing, it looks like students are just randomly flicking their fingers and wrists. But they are actually envisioning the abacus while they move their fingers, as if they were actually using one.

There are various methods of finger calculations that make use of abacus concepts. Watch another method that uses both hands in action:

Even very young children can calculate large sums very quickly using these abacus-based mental math methods. Watch these little superstars add two-digit to four-digit numbers like it's nothing.

How do they do it?

Much of the skill here requires a solid understanding of how an abacus is used to calculate and lots of practice with the physical movements of calculating with it. That's not exactly simple to explain, as it take a couple of years of practice using an abacus—for these mental calculations, specifically the Japanese soroban abacus—to gain the skills needed to be able to calculate quickly. BBC Global shares how such practices are taught in Japan, not only for mental math but for overall cognitive memory:

Abacus mental math programs online recommend learning it between the ages of 5 to 13. It is possible to learn at older ages, but it might take longer to master compared to younger students.

But if there's a finger method you want to try for addition and subtraction up to 99, one that's simple and quick to learn is called chisanbop, in which ones are counted on one hand and 10s are counted on the other. Here's an explainer video that shows how it works:

Chisanbop!

Most of us carry calculators around in our pockets with us at all time, so such practices may feel like a waste of time. But learning new skills that tax our brain is like a workout for our mind, so it's not a bad idea to give things like this a spin. Even if we don't learn to calculate large numbers in the blink of an eye, we can at least exercise our mental muscles to keep our brains healthier. And who knows, maybe we'll get a party trick or two out of it as well.

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Pop Culture

People are sharing 'hard-hitting' life lessons they wish they'd learned earlier

The older you get, the clearer certain lessons become.

Canva

Lots of people have regrets about not prioritizing their personal lives.

Sometimes life feels like a nonstop string of lessons we need to learn in order to be the best humans we can be. And much to our frustration, some of those lessons get repeated over and over, and some of our learning comes far later than we wish it would have.

Learning firsthand is often necessary for our own growth, but sometimes we can glean wisdom from what others have learned, especially folks who have been around a while. Older doesn't always mean wiser, but there are some things that age and experience offer that can be useful for younger people to pay heed to.

A Reddit user posted on Ask Reddit, "What's a hard hitting life lesson you learned way too late in life?" and people chimed in with some valuable insights. Some of the answers clearly came from a place of feeling hurt or beaten down, but the most popular answers are little gold nuggets we may have seen but not picked up ourselves.

Here are some of the top answers:

1. It's okay to say "no."

"The importance of setting boundaries and saying no. Turns out, people won't love you more for sacrificing your own well-being to please them. Wish I had known that sooner, would've saved a lot of unnecessary stress and burnt-out moments." – HappyPenguin112

""No." is a complete and perfectly acceptable sentence. I struggle with this myself regularly." – phlostonsparadise123

"If anything, setting boundaries and saying no will earn you MORE respect than saying yes." – Nonrandomusername19

"There are so many benefits to learning to say no. Even just the time saved alone from things that don't serve you." – LilyLove_xoxo

2. Work-life balance isn't negotiable.

"Work life balance is critical, and hustle culture is stupid. The only people who notice all those extra hours you put in at work are your family and friends." – GigabitISDN

"'I work 80 hours a week!' '40s are nothing' Yep. Yep… that’s why your wife divorced you and you never see your kids. Because you put your job over them." – slamuri

"Seriously. I had a CAREER. I trained up within the company, I got certified as a professional in the industry, and I was doing well and was well liked. It was a crazy busy and high paced job though, and I wasn't able to stay on top of it all without giving myself to it almost constantly. Checking emails at home, and even my time off that was time with my family turned into time spent panicking about work and how I will get everything done and make everyone happy.

I couldn't stand it anymore and abruptly left the industry. Now I have a better paying job that is more my speed, a true 8 hour day, and doesn't take any of my personal time. Never let work take over your life; it's just work. All it does is give you the money you need to do life. Don't let it absorb your happiness." – BoobySlap_0506

3. Don't assume everyone will think or react the way you do.

"Quit expecting you from other people." – goddess_of_fear

"I’ve heard it as: Never assume other people’s brains work the same way your brain works. Because they don’t." – Invisig0th

"My version is don’t expect yourself in others. Biggest stress reliever of all time!" – iam_caiti_b

"My hardest time with this is work ethic. I was taught to have pride in every job you do- no matter how small the task, do it to your best ability.

I expect this from everyone around me as it's such a basic premise to do things well and extremely frustrating when someone does a job haphazardly." – Top_Chair5186

4. Stop comparing.

"Comparison is the thief of joy." – assinmysock

"I’d be a lot further in life if I had stopped trying to keep up with the Joneses." – abearmin

"Stop comparing where you would've been if you'd done things differently, with where you are. Just enjoy where you are. :)" – Yet_One_More_Idiot

"Or, as my grandma would say, 'There will always be someone prettier, smarter, richer, etc. than you. Think about what you HAVE rather than what you don't have and you'll be much happier.' She was right." – SweetIcedTea73

5. Just say no to the smokes.

"Smoking isn't worth it." – SweetIcedTea73

"Yyyyep! I'm watching my dad slowly after smoking his whole life. Just avoid that sh*t." – piespiesandmorepies

"Stop for your children. They need you more than you need the nicotine and lung cancer. You've got this." – techzeus

"This is the one folks." – Pun_dimen

What lesson do you wish you had learned earlier?


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