Bad at Explaining Things

When it comes to explaining concepts and ideas to others, we Indians are pretty bad. I’ve wondered why that is so. One reason is ignorance. The person trying to explain or teach doesn’t understand the concept himself! But obviously, that can’t be true about everyone.

How about the people who do understand the idea? Maybe they don’t want to explain. (Only) I know; therefore I am promoted, get bigger hikes and command respect. Knowledge is power. And withholding knowledge confers even greater power. For others, the reason is pettiness: when I struggled to comprehend something, why then should others get an easy ride to enlightenment?

But I feel that the biggest reason is that most people have no idea how to explain things well! Why’s that? Because we almost never learnt from good text books at school. Rarely had great teachers who could explain concepts well. Most of us just learnt by rote in school and college.

But that just pushes the question one level back. Why aren’t text books written well? Why don’t teachers teach well? After all, you don’t have to be an Einstein to teach the lower and middle classes. Or write text books for them.

I then noticed that this problem is not unique to us Indians alone. The Europeans are quite bad too. Better than us, yes, but definitely not great. And that made me wonder. Could it be that the root cause is in the historical attitude towards knowledge in India and Europe? Look how they went about it. They used one language for the learned (Sanskrit and Latin). And another one for the masses (Pali and English or whatever). The system was basically designed to exclude people from learning. Not include. If exclusion is the aim, then the next step in such a system would have been to make the explanation as (unnecessarily) complicated as possible. Use unnecessary jargon. Use big words. Use phrases that nobody uses in daily life. Use the language of the high priests; and few will ever understand. Mission accomplished!

In India’s case, matters may have gotten worse due to the idea (good in intent; but terrible in its long term impact) that a teacher was to be revered. That concept gradually degraded to teachers can’t be questioned. Just obeyed. Hardly makes for an open, interactive, inquisitive setup, does it? Suppress the questions; and you’ll kill curiosity. And eventually kill learning itself.

The Americans are far better at explaining things. Since their ultimate aim is to make everything into a product for the masses that can eventually be sold, they are the experts at dumb’ing down things. Simplify, dumb’ify, ensure everyone can understand it: that’s their motto. Their expression “It’s not rocket science” captures that spirit well. (Only rocket science is complicated; everything else is easy!). They don’t use different sets of words or phrases for daily communication and teaching. Oh, if you are wondering how great teaching is converted into money, here’s an example: Berkeley University released Richard Muller’s “Physics for Future Presidents” lectures on YouTube. Potential students see the quality of the teacher in action before enrolling and want to join. Higher demand translates to higher fees!

Check out the ease with which Westerners can explain the most complicated concepts in layman terms. Watch Brian Greene explain String Theory (physics). Read Richard Dawkins on evolutionary biology. Go understand how things work at HowStuffWorks. Now, those are spectacular instance of teaching.

Wonder when we will learn to explain like that? We did have TED at Mysore last year and many of the Indian speakers did a great job. Like Harsha Bhogle on cricket. Or Shashi Tharoor on India’s soft power. Well, ok, maybe those aren’t instance of teaching. But good communication skills are a necessary condition for great teaching. And those talks had that ingredient. That’s a start.

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