Walnut Shells and an Important Life Lesson

COVID has been deadly and disruptive. One of the reasons we’re having so much trouble with it is that we’re not used to dealing with diseases we don’t know much about. Medical science has made such great strides that we believe that there’s a pill, potion, or procedure for any physical ailment.

That wasn’t true in 1952 when I was six years old. Kids I knew died from the measles. That vaccine was still a couple of years away. Kids I knew got polio. Some took the Sister Kenny treatments.

1952 was the year that I got nephritis. I’ve seen a picture of me in an area outside the hospital. I was sitting in one of those wooden wheelchairs looking about as sick as a boy could look.

The doctors at the hospital really didn’t know what to do. They suggested that the condition could run its course. Our family doctor, John Wadsworth, didn’t know what to do either but wasn’t willing to leave things to chance. He prescribed a diet that would take the stress off my kidneys. It was watermelon juice and white rice. I lived on it for six months. During that time, I couldn’t go to school.

Learning at Home

My mother wasn’t the sort of person to sit back and let things happen either. She got books and other things from school and taught me while I lived in my bedroom.

Some things worked fine. I’d already taught myself to read, so she could give me simple books. She read others to me. For arithmetic, she came up with her own method.

Mom used half walnut shells to teach me arithmetic. She’d lay them out on my bedspread and show me how two walnut shells plus two walnut shells equaled four walnut shells. She showed me more combinations, moving the shells around on the bedspread. When she left the room to do all the other things she had to do, she told me to play with those walnut shells.

I did. Heck, there wasn’t much else to do. I moved them around. I counted them. And I learned arithmetic.

Back to School

When I went back to school, I discovered that I was way ahead of the other kids in arithmetic. I had played with the concepts. I discovered how things worked. I also learned an important life lesson.

Learning is more likely to happen when you play with the ideas. In college, I applied that insight to calculus. I got a book of calculus problems and worked them diligently. I was able to turn learning calculus into a game by seeing how many problems I could solve correctly on the first try.

Knowing Isn’t Doing

We teach too many things through some form of lecture. We’d do better if we got to the doing part sooner. As my friend, Rod Santomassimo, says in his book, “Knowing isn’t doing.”

There are subjects where you don’t need to know how to do. You can learn history without very much doing. But it might be better if you visited some museums and saw some historical reenactments. I’ve always thought that people would learn more about poetry by trying to write poems, not just read about them or take notes in class.

Want to Learn A New Skill?

If you want to learn something new, remember the walnut shells. Start trying as soon as you can. Play with the ideas.

Sure, some of it will be difficult. Sure, some things might not come outright. But if you persist you get that a-ha moment where things become clear.

Takeaways

Get to live trials quickly.

We learn most and best when we play with ideas.