This blog will not answer the title question, but answer a much more relevant question: how and why should we hunt knowledge every day. It is inspired by my son, who asked the question and James S Bach’s “Secrets of a Buccaneer Scholar”.
First, about my son, then about James Bach. At six, my son loves science. Every time he asks questions like “why is the sky blue?” and “how long would it take to drive to the moon”, my wife and I dig into the answer with gusto. He loves math for much the same reason. We revel in his curiosity and encourage it. I have learned a lot teaching him.
Now, about James Bach. I found his book while looking for books about Software Testing. While James Bach also writes books about software testing, this book was about learning. It describes how, after dropping out of school with only an 8th grade diploma, he learned Assembly Language Programming, became a software tester, and now consults other software testers. It was his habit of self-education that gave him the edge over his college educated competition.
I’ll elaborate on just a few of his “great secrets”.
To learn something, it should be relevant. He calls these Authentic Problems. While I’ve studied several foreign languages in school, the 2-3 that I speak well I learned while living abroad, and are not the languages I learned in school. Likewise with software. The most useful software knowledge that I’ve gained has been because I needed the knowledge at work to solve a problem. I take the problem home and beat it into submission.
Cognitive Savvy. You have to understand how you learn. Everyone will learn differently. I learn well by processing things in multiples ways. For example, this blog entry will be my Toastmaster’s speech Tuesday. I know that I often fragment ideas as I restructure on the fly, so I videotaped myself reading it to ensure it flowed well.
Other minds. Woodrow Wilson said, “I not only use all the brains that I have, but all that I can borrow.” Bach refers to hunting knowledge in packs. I refuse to work alone because I want the ability to come up with crazy ideas. Some will be brilliant, some will be chaff. Other minds attacking my ideas allow me to be brilliant.
I will conclude by how I answered my son’s query: I dove in and made up a plausible answer on the spot. Diving in is always the first step across a river. Perhaps I could have solved it on my own, but I thought it would be more fun to hunt down the answer with my pack of friends and relatives. The most amusing answer was, “Because you’re further away from hell.” The most thorough and correct answer came from my brother, who has climbed all of the 14ers in Colorado. This was a very authentic problem for him. Now that I know the answer, I’m trying to understand it well enough to explain it to my six year old son. Finding the answer was a great hunt.
