DESIGN

I began writing that learning takes place within the individual, independent of external factors, but stopped as I realized that there are few or no cases in which that is true. I know from my own experience how drastic the effects of one's surroundings on his/her learning can be, and I believe it is crucial to take that into account while attempting to learn or teach. For example, I am significantly less productive at school than I am at home. While trying to work in class, I am lucky to solve a single physics problem in the time that it takes me to solve the rest of the problem set at home, and there is a noticeable gap between the quality of my in-class essays and the quality of the essays that I complete at home. This unfortunate decline in performance that afflicts everything from my mental faculties to my fine motor skills is undoubtedly due to the vast differences in the two environments; having to sit in a misshapen, rigid, plastic desk instead of my own familiar desk and chair, being constantly bombarded by obnoxious distractions instead of being immersed in some prolific tunes, having to wear regular clothes instead of my far more comfortable pajamas, etc. can go a long way in determining whether whatever I'm working on will be something that I am proud of, or something that I throw away and start from scratch at a time/place that is more conducive to learning. Everyone experiences learning (and most everything else for that matter) differently though, and as a result, different elements of a learning environment affect different people in different ways. This is why the "one size fits all" approach is broken and needs to be retired by a better, more individualized system of learning.