A Pattern Language — Pattern 18. Network of Learning

Christopher Alexander is monumental. I finally got to his Pattern Language.

Pattern 18 talks about Network of Learning:

In a society which emphasizes teaching, children and students—and adults—become passive and unable to think or act for themselves. Creative, active individuals can only grow up in a society which emphasizes learning instead of teaching.

And later:

Schools are designed on the assumption that there is a secret to everything in life; that the quality of life depends on knowing that secret; that secrets can be known only in orderly successions; and that only teachers can properly reveal these secrets. An individual with a schooled mind conceives of the world as a pyramid of classified packages accessible only to those who carry the proper tags.


New educational institutions would break apart this pyramid. Their purpose must be to facilitate access for the learner: to allow him to look into the windows of the control room or the parliament, if be cannot get in the door. Moreover, such new institutions should be channels to which the learner would have access without credentials or pedigree—public spaces in which peers and elders outside his immediate horizon now become available.…

Between 1977 and 2021, the thing that has changed the most in education is development of online tools, resources and connections that can be fostered through online presence. I don’t know if this ideal design of physical space could ever be achieved (although my nerdy teenage self would be drooling over this concept). But evolution of online courses and such massive storages of information as Wikipedia, Project Gutenberg and many more, is the kind of new educational institutions that Alexander talks about.

Naturally, with massive amounts of useful things, there is abundance of distractions and time-wasting resources as well. What young and old minds alike need is the ability, skill and habit of curating the vast ocean of information and entertainment there exists.

The difference between how Alexander imagined the new system of education, and the internet as we know it, is that there are no designated architects, administrators, and pedagogues. Anyone with a YouTube channel can become a pedagogue (or a preacher, for that matter). The question, again, is that of individual choice and curation — leading into matters of authority, and dispersed administration.

There still are a lot of unsolved issues raised by “A Pattern Language”, like that of tighter communities, gap between cities and country, or personal vehicles that are causing divide and raise other concerns. It’s good to see, on the other hand, how the flow of time and progress resolves, or at least, evolves some of the matters.

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Tea and meditation

“I meditate to be more productive” (or efficient, or focused) is like saying, “I drink green tea to fight possible dementia.” Possibly, reducing risks of getting dementia (or Alzheimer’s, or ) is one of the benefits of tea. But no one drinks green tea like this, as a medicine. Depending on your preferences and effort you want to put it, you can keep a stock of your basic sencha or hunt down more expensive limited harvest gyokuro or anything like that, and that’s going to be for something other than medical reasons. You’re someone who enjoys tea. Who values it for its own qualities, and not for the side effects. Surely, you can take your tea as medicine, but I doubt anyone actually does that.

Meditation is the same way. It’s because you believe that it’s the right path for you. Be that enlightenment or something else you’re seeking. Or maybe you’re there in your practice that you don’t seek anything, it is just the way you live your life. But it’s not a hack to stay organized in the things that are very far from everything that meditation stands for or is part of.

And yet, the author here is ready to contradict herself. Who can judge what the day is for someone else? Maybe someone starts off meditating as a therapeutic measure, and finds something more than that.

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Comeback museum visit

It’s been a long while since I found myself in a museum or a gallery. I wanted to say “over a year,” as there’s this habit of always starting from the pandemics outbreak. But in fact, I have since been in a few museums. And yet, it’s been a while. There’s a lot of longing for being in presence of art. Something that I never thought about until last year.

I missed big spaces. I missed having nothing to do but walk around and see and listen. Hamburger Bahnhof was my comeback visit today. Things and art pieces that are uncommon and distanced from everyday. Abstracted from the “normal” of daily life and activities — even when they depict the everyday.

“How do you feel about this painting? About this sculpture?…” There is a certain reverence towards simple objects or themes, because they are placed in a museum. Sometimes you can’t tell if it’s a floor decoration or a piece of art. I appreciate it when you can interact with the art. But interaction is not necessarily touching it, climbing on top of it, or mending it. You can touch art with your mind, and more than that, let it touch you. There’s reverence, and then there’s playfulness. That’s what I like about contemporary or modern art — you don’t have to be all serious and philosophical around it. You are entitled to feel whatever it is you’re feeling.

Hamburger Bahnhof has a Joseph Beuys exhibition now. Some rooms left me puzzled, and that’s okay. That’s the conversation around art, you don’t have to be sure to fully get it. You can be left puzzled about it, you can try and find its secret, you can imagine what it is that art is hiding.

A random camera shot turns a simple object into art. And one can argue, that is the very essence of art, an idea that anything can be art, if you pay enough attention, if you treat it like one.

One space had Beuys’s handwriting and drawings on chalkboards. Strange how you perceive handwriting hanging in a gallery. Especially when there’s a whole room filled with it. You don’t read it. Traditionally, writing is something created to be read. But here, you try to take it all in. Not to read, but to watch. In this sense, writing is not to convey words, but to convey images, impressions. You perceive words in their purity, as form that is stripped of content. The meaning is broader than the sum of words. In fact, it’s something different from the meaning of words, and that is definitely part of the artist’s exploration of language.

How do you maintain a chalkboard as an art object? Someone has to care for it, to notice where lines and words are fading, and take a chalk to them. Long after the author’s death, the perishable chalk writings on boards remain.

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Running. Four months in

When someone just started an activity or picked up a new hobby, and is now talking about it like they are an expert, giving out unsolicited advice — it’s so… lame, for lack of a better word. And yet here I am, with my freshly found running, writing about it. This is no advice, really — I hardly even have advice for myself at this point, other than, take it easy and keep running. The idea that I started something that I never thought I could, and it makes me feel great — it still is quite incredible. Maybe I need to see it in writing, to believe.

I dipped my toes in running last year, and it didn’t take. I enjoyed it a little, but also couldn’t run much. My consistent effort came about four months ago. In the February, I had five runs, for a total of 13 kilometers. My starting distance was a bit over two kilometers per run. March wasn’t better — four runs and ten kilometers total. Two months ago, in April, things started to pick up. I covered 30 kilometers, and in May, 45 kilometers. May also saw me run a 5k for the first time — completely unexpected. Now, my average, my “normal” run is about 30 minutes. Not always. Today, for example, I did a 25 minute run, and sometimes I run for 20 minutes. Depends on how much time I have and how sleepy I am in the morning. I can run every other day, and then not run for a week. In other words, it’s not like I’m training for anything, or getting a consistent effort. Yet, on a monthly scale, I’m getting what I want.

“Results” is not the best word to define this. Results are very much linked to goals. When there’s no goal other than enjoyment, it’s better to talk about “effects” rather than “results”. Effects that I felt from running so far are:

  • Increased energy levels. I’m less sluggish, and on most days, don’t tend to get sleepy after lunch.
  • Fun getting moving. I really enjoy the simplicity of it — repeated motions, getting the body moving, breathing, flying for those milliseconds when feet don’t touch the ground. The ease of starting a run. You put on your clothes, and shoes, and you use some sunscreen, and you go out. Everything else is optional.
  • (There’s definitely more than simplicity in the choice of running attire. It was also fun for a while: figuring out what shoes to buy, and getting amazed at the level of technological advancement that sports fabrics illustrate.)
  • The sweet feeling of being able to do something that until now has been a closed door. The sense of wonder and possibility.
  • I haven’t dropped any weight. But my form is changing, and I like it. Toned body just… feels great.
  • My nighttime heart rate is down, and my heart rate variability is on the upward trend. I guess, in many ways, my body thanks me.
  • Since I started running, I think I’ve become calmer, less reactive to the little everyday annoyances.
  • Another thing I run for is this feeling after a run — a mix of tired and energized. Taking a shower post-run is very different from just taking a shower.

I’m very far from the thought of running a marathon, or anything like that. There’s also no desire to always raise the bar. I am looking forward to uncovering all the lessons that running can teach me, that’s all. It’s a new side of life that I quote enjoy. And it made me pick up Haruki Murakami’s brilliant “What I Talk About When I Talk About Running.” I love it not for the running part, but for the brilliance of observation and thought. Now, also for running.

Getting yourself introduced to something not experienced before, starting something from square one, doesn’t make you a different person. Yet, it has a capacity of showing you that maybe you don’t know everything about yourself. Maybe the way you are used to thinking about yourself is not all there is to you, and to your life. With running, there’s always a new starting line to cross, and it’s always a little bit of dive into the unknown, that is exciting.

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The way she learns

Watching kids learn is so insightful. My four-year-old has picked up a longboard (my longboard, or something formerly known as mine). The way she tries to ride is so interesting. There is absolutely no stress about mastering the skill. She looks at what I do, she listens to my advice — sometimes she follows it, sometimes she doesn’t.

There’s absolutely no pressure. She holds my hand — one foot on the board, the other one pushing. She then steps with the second foot, and waits for the board to stop. She tries to do the same by herself a few times, succeeds. Then goes back to holding my hand. Then, after a bit, she sits on the board and pushes with both feet. Or she runs around, carrying the board, “looking for a place to start”. Then she tries again.

My instructions are often redundant, because what I have in mind is very different from what she’s doing. While I’m thinking in terms of “how do I learn this”, along with “how do I get past the embarrassment of not being able to do this well”, she is playing. She is not concerned with the looks, or with the mastery. She is simply having fun.

And I bet, with an approach like that, kids learn better than adults.

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Monday quote: Haruki Murakami

I used to have a habit of copying down all quotes from books that i read into a notebook. That habit is long gone, but I like going back to the quotes of something that I once read.

Today is Monday — start of the week for those who don’t consider the weeks to be starting on Sunday. I can add the first thing I read on a Monday here, and maybe in a year, it’d be interesting to go back and revisit what I was reading. It’s not a quote, as something that I found particularly interesting, or true, or could relate to. It is the first thing that I had in my reading day.

Last night, I started reading a new collection of stories by Haruki Murakami, titled “First Person Singular: Stories.” I read just one story before bed, and today, I started with the second story, “On A Stone Pillow.” Here’s the quote, beginning of the story.

I’d like to tell a story about a woman. The thing is, I know next to nothing about her. I can’t even remember her name, or her face. And I’m willing to bet she doesn’t remember me, either. When I met her, I was a sophomore in college, and I’m guessing she was in her mid-twenties. We both had part-time jobs at the same place, at the same time. It was totally unplanned, but we ended up spending a night together. And never saw each other again.

Haruki Murakami “On A Stone Pillow”

Tomorrow, Daniel Kahneman’s new book is released, “Noise. A Flaw in Human Judgement”, let’s see what I’m reading next Monday.

By the way, one story from Murakami reads like part of Salinger’s “Nine Stories,” juxtaposed over Japan a few decades later. It’s “With The Beatles.”

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Got anything?

Every day I pick her up from daycare, she asks, “Have you got anything for me?” and often, “What is it? What do you have for me?”

I’m her drug dealer.

(Of course I’m her drug dealer, I give her chocolates in doses that are far from homeopathic. Highly addictive at the age of four.)

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A stranger in a familiar place

Waiting at a train or a subway station feels very different if you are in an unfamiliar city, traveling for example. I was thinking this as I got a bit stuck in transit. I was on my way home after dropping off my daughter in daycare. And I remembered the first months after moving to Berlin: the city still unfamiliar, as well as the language; trains and busses still something new — not as a concept, but as this specific country’s variety. I paid more attention to how things were written, even more as I didn’t fully understand their meaning. A lot of little daily things that I hardly ever notice today, I watched and watched back then. The signs, the typography, the green text in the wagons showing the next station and an arrow to advise on which side the platform would be… The same way my kid now notices and gets excited when we are on a new train, how the upholstering in the train car is different, and how this train is unlike the older ones in the little details. It is only when we travel and encounter new things, we are able to revive the sense of wonder and puzzlement that we had as kids.

Another thought is about childhood. Looking back, we underestimate how confused we were as kids. We remember the sense of wonder and joy and surprise. But we forget the endless confusion, puzzlement and the necessity to rely on a trusted adult to figure things out. The trusted adult who is not going to pay attention to the minute details, but will make sure that we are safe in navigating the city, or any environment.

Growing used to the place, we stop noticing, we stop looking. Not a bad thing. But one needs a sense of novelty every now and again. Maybe this is the sense that we can find in ourselves — using our old environments in a new way, doing something different in them. If we are still on the topic of being in transit, you can get on a bus or ride a bike instead. And that will be new. You can pick up a new activity, and it will bring you a sense of having potential, which means seeing fresh, being something new that you haven’t been before. There is always a measure to the amount of comfort and certain numbness to the environment we want to have, maybe to focus on the inside of us rather than the outside; and equally, there is a level of wonder and looking with fresh eyes that life wants.

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Learning styles myth

Dividing people into subtypes based on their dominant perception — auditory, visual, and tactile — has always felt a little wrong to me. Sometimes, kinesthetic is added into the mix. This subdivision is often applied to learning styles. Do you learn better when you look, listen, write (or is it doodle? take notes?) or do things by hand? (See EducationPlanner as an example.)

I thought of myself as mostly auditory; maybe because I liked music, I was a DJ, and I wanted to be in touch with my hearing/listening perception. But then, who isn’t a visual type? We all perceive information better when presented in a diagram or with similar visual aids, than when listening to it — in numbers, especially. And touch. Isn’t touch important to me? Oh, it is, no doubt about it.

So, by attributing yourself to one of the senses, you’re robbing yourself of everything else. We are multi-faceted. Everything is important. It is unnecessarily limiting to stick to what you think is right for you, without exploring other things that could be equally or more beneficial. This attribution to one of the senses is supposed to be a hack, and instead, it does not benefit you. You don’t learn faster, better and stronger by focusing only on one type of skill or one sort of exercise. You can’t train just one muscle. You can’t learn a language by only learning grammar, or not learning grammar, for that matter. You have to, and you inevitably will, engage all senses that are available to you.

As I’m googling the subject more, I find articles, including this one from American Psychological Association, debunking the myth of learning styles:

“Previous research has shown that the learning styles model can undermine education in many ways. Educators spend time and money tailoring lessons to certain learning styles for different students even though all students would benefit from learning through various methods.”

As much as our brain loves categories and simplifications, we should not be depriving ourselves of a broader outlook. There is no simple hack: do this, and get the ultimate result. You have to do this, and this, and that.

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Reading for guidance and curiosity

I recently picked up a culinary book from World War II, first published in England in 1942. The title is “How to Cook a Wolf”, written by MFK Fisher.

As I was only on the first pages, I thought about how different this experience is from reading something written recently, 80 years after. An old book like that can be treated as an interesting read, a curiosity — without the assumption that this will be taken as immediate advice. There have been huge advancements (and some setbacks) in the science of diets and health. Recently written books are, essentially, guides. Just one type of how-to writings that the reader is supposed to pick up from the shelf or a Kindle version of the shelf, and learn from it. We as readers are told what we have been doing wrong, and how to improve ourselves, as taught by an expert, or an investigator (journalist) who asked the experts on our behalf. Being a learner, having a clean slate is one thing. Thinking that you need to learn or re-learn everything, is another. It’s anxiety-inducing. It’s sad.

Think about these fresh guidebooks, as read from a distance of twenty, or fifty, or a hundred years. Readers then will stand on the shoulders of giants, having uncovered new knowledge in the realm of eating, or whatever the topic of interest is — anything, really. Why then, not read them with a grain of salt (because salt brings out the flavor of all foods, so yeah, pun totally intended). Read these new books more with curiosity than the worry that you have been doing something wrong your entire life. Surely, not every old book is a carrier of wisdom. Some parts can be wise, other parts have their right to be outdated. And yet, there’s something completely different in how I read old books, as compared to new.

I find old, well-written books more relaxing than most of the do-this-don’t-do-that contemporary books. Not all old books are good. If we keep to the matter of healthy eating, all the Dukan and Atkins and I’m sure many other diets are questionable today after what, forty years since their invention. And the shift from blaming fat on everything to blaming sugars and other carbs… Examples are plenty. But generally, because with older books, I have more expectations around the style of writing that direct advice, I find them a more relaxed reading, done for the purpose of elevating the soul, if you forgive the high style, — rather than educating.

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