Knowledge and capability are different. Just like energy and the potential to have energy are different things but intricately connected.
When you wake up, you have the potential to be energetic, but in the few moments after you have pried your eyelids open this may seem impossible. Just like it may seem impossible for a child, struggling with learning how to read to become an English teacher.
The potential, is there from the beginning, but the knowledge is picked up along the way. The job of teachers is to bestow that knowledge as best they can to the student and to encourage the student along their journey. Inversely the student’s job is to learn the subject as best they can.
I would like to establish some learning principles that I have found to be true over the years.
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.Everyone, no matter how it seems, has the potential to become an expert, and knowledgeable in their field or in the inadequate term, “smart.”
.No one is dumb. Some are just still full of potential. Like a roller coaster at the top of a hill, it has the potential to have great speed but until it starts down the track it will only ever be full of potential energy.
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There are there are three main stages to learning: Potential to learn, learning, and “expert.” Now, “expert” is a bit of a misnomer because a true “expert” continues to learn and stay sharp in their field so in a way they have not yet completed the learning process. This is the only way an expert can stay an expert. So once the person reaches the expert phase they never stop learning. There are a few exceptions to this because there are certain things that involve finite learning like martial arts. One can be considered an expert in martial arts once they have learned all there is to learn in their respective martial arts. However this is only slightly applicable since you could argue that the true definition of a martial arts expert can only be called an expert when they can maintain they proper level of fitness to be able to execute what they have learned. But, my point still stands, for the majority of time an expert is someone who has reached the top of their field and can maintain their position there. This raises another question, what is the mark of an expert? At this time I would like leave the reader to mull that question over and instead ask a different question. What makes someone a good learner? Or in the terms of martial arts, “black belt material.” In the martial arts or in any sport, someone who is “good at a sport” is someone who has the drive, self-discipline and technique as the “expert.” They are cut from the same cloth or they contain all the necessary building blocks.
The learner is not an expert yet but they contain the ability to get there. Hmm, this is sounding familiar right? “Everyone, no matter how it seems, has the potential to become an expert.” I have seen this time and time again, the ones who have the potential to succeed and become the experts are almost never the ones who are naturally good at it but the ones who have the will and the drive to succeed or… learn. Many coaches and athletes know this but in the normal stem subjects it seems to be lacking. In math and science if a student does not show an immediate, natural instinct to perform the subject they are ostracized from the group and told they would never be an expert in that field. Many students are told they simply are not good at math, like this is a scientific fact. “If you’re not good at math now, you will never be.” This phrase does not make sense. Whoever told Usain bold that he would never be a fast runner when he was learning how to walk or a black belt that just because they couldn’t perform a perfect kick right off the bat that they would never be able to break a solid board with their bare hands? This kind of talk is absurd!
Yet often times this is the kind of things early learners are told. “If you don’t already know how a cell divides you will never become a biologist” “If you can’t do long division now then you will never understand quantum mechanics!” Someone cannot know something before they have learned it. 1+1 does not equal 2 if there is not a second 1. 1 plus nothing is still only 1.
Now, one does not have to be an expert in order to teach a subject. There are instances where a student can teach themselves the knowledge of a certain field and become a legitimate self-proclaimed expert.