Learning Curve

See the Books I'm Reading sidebar? It took almost an hour to enter those five books yesterday -- the book covers that link straight to the information page, and the hyperlinks as well. But now I know how to do it.

I think it will take less time when I next do it, because that is the typical pattern. You spend big time on your learning curve uphill slope and then you get to rely on what you already know.

My 11 year old, Kieron, is learning to do gif animation. He wanted to learn how, so with a bit of supervision he looked it up himself, downloaded a tool and some information, and set to work. He spent over an hour getting two characters towards each other on a page. But the same thing will happen to him, too. He will get to the mastery point and then he can focus on what he is doing, not how he is doing it.

This is similar to how Charlotte Mason's notion of Habits work. You do things that make virtue easier, and you do them again and again until you don't even have to think about them. If you are in a habit of telling the truth it becomes very difficult to lie. This guards us from moral dilemma in daily life, so we can save our pondering and willpower for the "big things".

Thomas Aquinas refers to a virtue as "a good habit bearing on activity," or a good faculty-habit (habitus operativus bonus). (from article by Father Hardon)

In the early habit-forming stages, it is helpful to have strong motivation. I wanted to know how to get those books over there on that sidebar. I knew if I could get past the learning part, I would have a useful tool at my disposal (and I could find out if there was an easier way to do it!!)

It is also good to have a general sense of competence. Thankfully, Kieron has acquired a "can do" attitude as a fifth sibling, homeschooled. I somehow acquired one as a firstborn, public schooled. I just read recently in a waiting room magazine that kids learn confidence from testing themselves against appropriate level challenges and learning to cope with failure. Resilience is the key to self-esteem, according to this, not compliments and protection from all adversity. More on this at Eide Neurolearning. This too fits in with some of Charlotte Mason's ideas.

I talked on my other blog about how motivation and focusing on how I COULD do it helped me organize my hours in a day. (It is an ongoing process though, and that's the other aspect of habits I don't have time to write about today! certainly learning from failure has come into it!).

This started off as a simple asking-for-commiseration for my sidebar challenges, and turned into a reflection. LOL. Off to T-ball with my little ones.