Why Intellectually Knowing is Not Effective Learning

It’s time to know more intimately to change your life

I don’t know if it’s a compliment when someone says that we know so much like an encyclopedia.

It’s nice, but it could be a risk to any learner.

When we read widely and remember facts well, there’s a risk that we haven’t developed an emotional attachment to our knowledge. We might even be proud to be so knowledgeable.

That’s our ego being knowledgeable, not us.

This type of knowing is great for going on game shows like Who Wants to Be A Millionaire. However, to really understand knowledge and wisdom about mental health, living and spirituality, to know something intellectually is not enough, in fact, it can hinder our journey to better ourselves.

For 2021, anyone who intends to improve their mental health and even become a better spiritual (or religious) person, I think our new year resolution needs to include: improve experiential knowledge.

What’s Intellectual Knowing/Head knowledge?

It’s also known as textbook knowledge, where we understand something through learning about it with our head. We only use our thinking mind when learning about this, but nothing else.

Most of our knowledge is textbook-based. For example, mathematics is a pure textbook for me. I don’t personally affiliate with it, but I know how to do differentiation. It remains in my head, but if I don’t practice much, my maths skill can become rustic and eventually fades away.

Another type of head knowledge is practice-based. For example, I can play the piano very well and still recite the piece I played for my first recital. I don’t like that song very much, but it was muscle memory as I practised so hard back then. My connection with the piano is much stronger when I play other songs and when I improvise.

Why is head knowledge risky?

Ironically, head knowledge is risky because it’s very safe. It is usually factual, rational, and descriptive, which means that we are not personally affected by it. We learn it, acknowledge it, sometimes get a little bit fascinated by it, then we move on.

“In the context of schooling, textbooks are treated like documents: they are not to be challenged, neither are they to be interpreted” — Playing by the Book: The Problem of Textbook Knowledge (Suzanne de Castell)

The above scholar argues that this type of descriptive teaching starts from the Bible and Sunday schools, where children learn about Christianity through objective, factual lenses. The authority of the Bible and the characters for God are undisputed, and this way of unchallenged learning applies unconsciously to education, and influence how most of us learn (particularly but not limited to the West).

I didn’t grow up going to Sunday schools but I started going to church when I turned 18 years old. As a social anthropologist, I found that the way people talk about God at fellowships and bible study groups very strange. They are searching for references that can guide them in their righteous ways, as long as they found those words, they seem to be satisfied because their rule book for life is set straight.

Is God just guidance on righteous living? I believe it’s more than that, the magnitude of a creator is now equated to law and governance, which doesn’t have to be sacred for a start. The sacred thing about God doesn’t lie in its teaching but lie in the fact, no matter how we challenge his words, we still feel its unwavering, all encompass powerfulness.

This is why I became a Christian at 18 years old because I felt the grace and greatness of God.

When I said this, my born Christian friends can’t relate to it at all.

Why does experiential knowledge matter?

My born-Christian friends don’t seem to have the same experience with God as I do probably because they are so knowledgeable in their heads. When we read the bible together, they reference back and forth in different books to prove that this saying is credible and definitely consistent with all God/Jesus’ teaching.

That’s all very well, but what does it do in connecting us with God? How does that help us to align our conscience with the Holy Spirit — the pillar of Trinity Jesus said would remain with us after his resurrection? Nothing.

The same is with any mental health knowledge. One in four people have a mental disorder at some point in our lives currently and the situation will get worse as the pandemic prolongs. But our knowledge is so textbook that we might not truly benefit from the therapy treatments.

What is the outcome when we know that, say our anxiety disorder with Covid-19 is because our Amygdala in the brain feels unsafe and decides to override our rational mind? That’s just knowledge, how we can reverse the Amygdala next time it is triggered is experiential knowledge. We need to feel the anxiety in order to take back control.

To discuss this with any practitioner or people relate to a person with mental health (such as family, friends, and work people), their lack of experiential knowledge will lead them to state facts that are useless, and their empathy won’t be sufficient to make the sufferer feel better.

We need experiential knowledge in this world right now.

How can we get experiential knowledge then?

Using relatable examples is one of the ways to build experiential knowledge. So now I am going to use a relatable example to help readers to gain experiential knowledge on the importance of experiential knowledge (!).

Are you familiar with David Attenborough? The almighty English broadcaster and natural historian that have narrated numerous amazing natural documentaries such as Planet Earth.

In his shows, the natural world is very intriguing, the picture is stunning, but as a city person, I find it hard to relate to it, it’s like a world that’s nothing to do with me despite we are both on the Earth. We often put the show as a background to a fancy house party, TV salesmen like to put them on to show the colour quality.

This is because we just learn about the natural world with our heads. We didn’t experience it. If the purpose of the show is to fascinate us and to educate us that we must be good to the planet now, it does mostly the former and less of the latter.

That’s until, David Attenborough started to talk about human’s negative impact on nature at the end of the later shows, and in this particular episode about wildlife in the cities. Now I know how urban lights are fucking new-born turtles up, and how we have disrupted the habitats so badly.

The natural world turns from textbook to experiential knowledge to me immediately, and every word I read about the climate crisis now has a completely new meaning. It’s related to me, and I can’t choose convenience and plastic over the planet anymore.

Closing words

It’s a big topic to talk about experiential knowledge and this serves as an introduction. I touch on spiritual, mental health, and climate crisis knowledge because they are what I believe, the most important and urgent areas that we need addressing now.

I also show that it’s not so much that we have to experience something first hand (like going to nature) to gain experiential knowledge. It’s about how it is narrated by the educators, and how much awareness we have on the differences between textbook and experiential knowledge.

This is very important when we want to show our love and care for people suffering from mental health issues, also important to appeal to the public about the climate crisis, as well as to truly lead humanity into spiritual awakening.

I admire one scholar I know who has such emotional experience with mathematics. He loves it so much that they aren’t just numbers for him as they are for me (well for me, they are headaches). In his eyes, maths has endless possibilities, and it's a pure source of joy.

Different people are appealed by different things, of course, but in changing the way we teach, knowledge might become more compelling to more people and motivate us to build a better place. This is how humanity and civilization grow.

Further reading on experiential knowledge here.