Publish at August 19 2019 Updated November 26 2021
One of Destin Sandlin's mechanic friends wanted to have a little fun with his engineer buddy; he reversed the direction of rotation of the handlebars of a bicycle: when you turn the handlebars of his modified bicycle, the steering goes in the opposite direction. He wanted to and observe how much time it would take him to adapt his driving.
After a few tries, Destin was surprised to see that he was totally unable to control this contraption, he who had been riding a bicycle since he was 6 years old and was quite physically skilled... why was he unable to change his way of operating?
As he lectured and demonstrated with this modified bicycle, he was able to generalize: no one is able to do this spontaneously, let alone those who "know" how to ride a bicycle. He offered $200 to anyone who was able to ride 10 feet (3 meters) without putting their foot on the ground. He still has his $200 with him.
Learning to ride a bicycle takes a few hours of practice. We don't need anyone to tell us if it's right or wrong. Reinforcements towards the right actions are automatic.
After a few hours of activity, the integration of sensations and motor commands is accomplished. The skills needed to find and maintain balance while steering the bike in the desired direction are learned and constantly reinforced until you don't even have to think about it. Great... but this powerful reinforcement has apparently generated neural pathways so deep that it becomes difficult to change anything, no matter how badly you want to.
After 8 months, at 5 minutes of practice a day, Destin suddenly mastered the machine. Not gradually: yesterday he couldn't, today he can, as if something had connected in an instant. Of course he could be easily unfocused and revert to his old automatisms, but at least he managed. Within a few hours, as his positive experiences accumulated, he became more and more confident and eventually reached the same level of control as on a normal bike.
His 6 year old son learned to control this bike much faster than he did, which leads us to suspect that children apparently have more "neuro-plasticity". But that was not the end of his discoveries.
When he wanted to start riding a normal bike again, what was his surprise to discover that he had become unable to do so... after 20 minutes, the same kind of click when he succeeded the first time happened: suddenly, he regained the right reflexes and was recovering his initial skill.
His fundamental conclusion is that we experience the world through perceptual biases and behaviors that are as much physical as they are mental. We see certain frequencies, hear certain sounds, are sensitive to certain signals that we think are universal but in fact have no universal character even if we have fully integrated them.
His experimentation demonstrates that when necessary, we can change our ideas with effort and perseverance.
If ideas and preconceptions are inappropriate to the context, one is likely to find oneself marginalized, like newly arrived immigrants in a new country: it is difficult to unlearn many of the habits and conventions that one has intimately integrated and yet no longer fit. Like arriving in Amsterdam and knowing how to ride a bike on an inverted bike, where no such bike exists.
Also, one then needs positive reinforcements to change, many and powerful reinforcements towards success. It's not the bike crashes or the taunts that make the learning, but the time spent balancing and moving in the direction you want.
For over 20 years now we have been working to integrate new technologies into education. This integration remains laborious and often superficial, for many good reasons.
When the context changes, changing pedagogical methods, "educational algorithms", built and developed over decades and integrating a good number of implicit or pre-suppositions, both material and behavioral, all this requires effort and perseverance, as much in teachers as in students. At some point, something clicks, but it is neither gradual nor predictable, but quite inescapable if we persevere.
Let's be persistent...and demanding.
The Backwards Brain Bicycle - Smarter Every Day 133
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