What’s being learned

We notice that what we learn is not always what’s being taught.

Our navigator was reminiscing about his Navy years recently, something we do not encourage but tolerate sometimes.  He and his entering cohort were trained in small-arms; that is, they were taught to fire the .45 caliber pistol and M-14 rifle, and brought out to the firing range to make holes in paper targets at specified distances.  If their score was good enough, they earned a qualification ribbon to put on their (brand-new) uniforms.  Now, even that long ago the chance of a Navy ship getting within sight of an enemy was small, and getting within small-arms range tiny.  Except for the fraction of his class that became Marines, none would ever use this skill.  It was hardly efficient to train everyone.

The cynical conclusion might be that Navy officers had been taught to shoot since firearms existed, and by a sort of inertia the practice continued.  Less cynical, but more frivolous, was the idea that the point was to get ribbons and so learn a detail of wearing the uniform.  But our navigator points out that shooting well requires maintaining concentration and fine motor control in the midst of a string of nearby explosions.  That, indeed, is a useful military skill, whether or not it was the original intention.

And consider celestial navigation.  As he learned it, the process required careful measurements with an analog device (a sextant); then a mathematical process of adding, subtracting, entering numbers into and taking them from tables, and at the end plotting lines on a chart.  The numbers themselves would fill a full 8 by 10 sheet of paper.  When he was in practice, he could produce a four-star fix in 40 minutes.  A mistake of one degree would put the result off by at least 60 nautical miles.  The aim was, of course, to work out the ship’s position.  But in the process he learned to do arithmetic and data lookup quickly, without mistakes.  He developed a set of habits and cross-checks that, as he thinks back on them and describes them, have been useful for our tutor.

We’ve mentioned before our opinion that the real point in teaching a class in school may not lie in the nominal subject matter.  Here we realize that other apparently pointless or inexplicable activities actually teach useful lessons, intentionally or not.

However, our navigator continues, such is not always the case.  A requirement for his Merchant Marine officer’s license was to conn a rowing lifeboat; that is, to give the proper orders to the six rowers so the craft would actually move in a controlled fashion.  Now, rowing lifeboats have disappeared from any seas our navigator was likely to see, much less any ships he was likely to serve on.  The requirement could have been used as an opportunity to learn how to teach a skill (rowing), coordinate a group, and master a new situation quickly.  All these would have been good aims.  But the time required (and allowed) was so short (a few minutes) that none of these could actually be accomplished.  It was just a pointless requirement left over from long ago.

Sometimes we learn useful things in unexpected ways.  Not always.