There’s something called “The Curse of Knowledge”.

It’s the fact that once you know something, it’s hard to remember what it was like when you didn’t know it.

For example, once you learn a language, you tend to forget the things about that language that used to be challenging or difficult for you.  You forget all the details and concepts you struggled with and what you didn’t understand.

“The Curse of Knowledge” makes it difficult to be a good teacher because you can’t relate to the student 100%.  You’re standing in very different places with very different views.

I was reminded of this recently when I went to India for the first time.

(Click below to see four ~1 minute videos with highlights of the trip)

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLS6miy9FykgHZjMEpy0KQzpi_F9XcZvAr

This was the first time in my adult life that I had spent more than a day in a place where I didn’t know the language AND I couldn’t read the alphabet.

Being around family all the time, I really wanted to learn the language.  It was spoken all around me.  All over town, signs, posters and notices were in that script.  I really wanted to understand what was going on.

So I had tons of motivation and I was in an immersion environment.

Unfortunately, no matter how much I was paying attention or how many signs I saw or how many hours of conversation I heard, I still couldn’t understand anything.  There’s just too much to decode. All the letters look the same and everything sounds like gibberish.  I can’t tell where one word ends and the other begins let alone where sentences and statements start and end.

So I decided to start learning in a deliberate fashion.  I got my cousin-in-law to write out the alphabet for me with a word that corresponds to each letter.

Now, not only did I have motivation and an immersion environment, I also had access to information that could help me decode things.

However, what she wrote out in 10 minutes was basically more than I could retain over the two weeks that I was there.

I did learn a lot.  But getting the whole alphabet (in this case 34 letters + extras and a bunch of vowel marks) plus a word associated with each letter was just way too much information.

I even saw a YouTube video that introduced 5 similar looking letters at one time, and that was too much.

I think I can learn just two or three new things at a time.  And maybe even just one.

And like that coat hanger analogy I need to hook each thing to something else I know as much as possible.  Or just repeat it enough times so that it gets stuck in my head like one of those annoying songs (although hopefully not make it quite as annoying as one of those annoying songs).

So, going forward, we have a new plan.  Or sub-plan, among our other plans.

We recently started a series of Daily Athkaar for Muslim Kids.  They’re daily prayers to remember God in every situation.

There’s tons of Arabic in there.

Going forward, we’ll start covering a few words at a time from the Daily Athkaar for Muslim Kids so you can learn something new every day (or every few days… in case I don’t get to post every day) and slowly but surely build our understanding of Arabic :).

So stay tuned!

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