Reach and Reciprocity

I feel as if I’ve only just learned how to learn.

I’m currently reading David Brooks’ The Social Animal. In it, Brooks references the idea of Reach and Reciprocity found in Richard Ogle’s Smart World.

“Start with the core knowledge in a field, then venture out and learn something new. Then come back and reintegrate the new morsel with what you already know. Then venture out again. Then return. Back and forth. Again and again. As Ogle argues, too much reciprocity and you wind up in an insular rut. Too much reach and your efforts are scattershot and fruitless.”

For a long time I have intuited the concept of Reach and Reciprocity without it becoming conscious. When I read a book and it seems to have “come into my life at just the right time,” or some such sentimentality, I realize that I had simply reached out to some knowledge that could be effectively integrated with my past experience at that time. In delving into a new topic of interest, I spend a lot of time finding just the right book that will match my current intellectual standing and motivations, that will most efficiently convey a wide, solid foundational understanding.

When I learned to play the banjo, I knew, from having experienced skill level plateaus with the guitar, that it would be essential to start with the fundamentals (I still can’t use my pinky very well to play guitar). I spent two weeks just using my right hand, learning the strumming technique before playing a single chord, let alone a song. With my muscle memory in place, I could let that focus drop away and begin to think about how to position my left hand as the right kept strumming away, bum-ditty bum-ditty bum-ditty.

I wonder how much earlier I would have been capable of this limited self-knowledge. How much earlier I could have learned how to learn, been able to acknowledge and examine, in some small way, the tumultuous processes of synthesis going on in my skull. Can this knowledge of ideas and how the brain develops and organizes information be successfully implemented and passed on in the classroom? Perhaps therein lies the rub. Young minds may simply not be at the point in their development where they can effectively venture out to gather up the concept of reach and reciprocity. To learn how to learn, we must simply do it, and suffer the results of inevitable failed attempts. But the greatest teachers carry this knowledge and serve as excellent guides along the way.