Maroc - NEWSDAY.CO.TT - A la Une - 28/Sep 09:43

Do you comprehend?

AS people – and as a people – we don’t ask the right questions. That’s if we’re brave enough to ask any at all in the first place. How many media briefings have we all tuned in for (on health, crime, general world woes) and wondered at the peculiarity or randomness of the questions sometimes put to the speakers? Questionable questions don’t only come from the media, it’s just that being the media puts them in the spotlight. The rest of us have the luxury of not getting it right in private. Comprehension is the problem. Let’s start with this: for many, comprehension is nothing more than a subject taught in primary school. It forms some part of the English curriculum (and the dratted exams) as found in secondary schools. Here is a passage you never saw before. Here, the unfathomable poem. And, in a few minutes, a child or other type of young person is meant to take this in and grasp their meaning well enough to answer a bunch of questions. The thing that bothered me most about the comprehension sections from my earliest encounters with them was as simple as it should have been predictable: I usually had several competing opinions. All of them potentially right. Or wrong. Then there’s the thing all of us with sound West Indian educations are aware of – there’s the answer you think is correct and the one you think the markers will think correct. No, the dementia has not set in and left me in the thrall of early education. This is something I mildly obsess over. There are some people who are great at doing the understanding and figuring out of things. And there’s everyone else. Comprehension is one of the most crucial life skills I can think of. Like crossing a street or swimming. If we teach it better – if we even started to appreciate the vastness of its importance – so many things would make more sense. The news, instructions and decisions from on high that affect us, why the ending of The Godfather is so satisfying no matter how many times you see it. I’ve seen terrible things over my vast career in emergency English bootcamp for small relatives on the cusp of an exam. They all had in common the same thing I saw in my peers long, long past university: they really did not know how to get to the crux of the question. Let’s say it’s something like, “What does Burt’s passion for bananas in this passage tell us?” Students will then proceed to write everything they can find about Burt, passion and bananas. There’s a problem with focusing on the arrangement of the words in the question and getting to the point. Things go from bad to hell when these early exercises are replaced by essays and dissertations. I never understood why anyone would need extra paper in an exam. What did they all know that I didn’t? What didn’t I get? Terrible, terrible, all is lost. I was always sure I’d fail every exam. It would be some years before I realised that brevity was not a sin. If we do better at pulling and stretching young minds (or old, never too late) so what they take from the comprehension exercises is a tool they can use in all subjects, the world would be a better place. As my most extreme example, I tell people it will help with maths. It will. Because understanding the underlying concept of an equation must help in the sense-making. I know we’re not in the habit of explaining theory to the young and hapless. But we should be. There should be a way to break things down the way we’re able to with times tables. We can’t understand everything the universe throws at us. We can be better prepared. We need to know we have it in us to take something apart and put it back together from different angles. This is not a secret superpower I happened to be gifted with. I have two things that helped. I know when something does not make sense to me and I am not afraid to ask questions. I do fear misunderstanding and confusion. Spitting out things you memorise is what school asks of us most of the time. The unschool world is different. People want to be able to leave you with some questions or tasks and not have to look over your shoulder. Little things like jobs and relationships. Aren’t they worth it? Remember to talk to your doctor or therapist if you want to know more about what you read here. In many cases, there’s no single solution or diagnosis to a mental health concern. Many people suffer from more than one condition. The post Do you comprehend? appeared first on Trinidad and Tobago Newsday.