The Three Barriers to Studying a Subject

There are three primary barriers which keep one from
successfully studying a subject.

The First Barrier – the Misunderstood Word

A misunderstood definition or a not-comprehended definition or an undefined word can thoroughly block one’s understanding of a subject and can even cause one to abandon the subject entirely.

This milestone in the field of education has great application, but it was overlooked by every educator in history.

Going past a word or symbol for which one does not have a proper definition gives one a distinctly blank or washed-out feeling. The person will get a "not there" feeling and will begin to feel a nervous hysteria. These are manifestations distinct from either of the other two barriers.

The barrier of the misunderstood word is far more important than the other two, however. It has much to do with human relations, the mind and different subjects. It establishes aptitude or lack of aptitude and is the key to what psychologists were attempting to test for years without recognizing what it was.

A person might or might not have brilliance as a computer programmer, but his ability to do the motions of computer programming is dependent exclusively and only upon definitions. There is some word in the field of computer programming that the person who is inept did not define or understand and that was followed by an inability to act in the field of computer programming.

This is extremely important because it tells one what happens to doingness and that the restoration of doingness depends only on the location and understanding of any word which has been misunderstood in a subject.

Have you ever come to the bottom of a page only to realize you didn’t remember what you had just read? That is the phenomenon of a misunderstood word, and one will always be found just before the material became blank in your mind.

The Second Barrier – Lack of Mass

Attempting to educate someone without the mass (or object) that he is going to be involved with can make study exceedingly difficult.

For example, if one is studying tractors, the printed page and the spoken word are no substitute for an actual tractor. Lacking a tractor to associate with the written word, or at least pictures of a tractor, can close off a person’s understanding of the subject.

Definite physiological reactions occur when trying to educate a person in a subject without the thing actually present or available.

A student who encounters this barrier will tend to feel squashed, bent, sort of spinny, sort of dead, bored and exasperated. He can wind up with his face feeling squashed, with headaches, and with his stomach feeling funny. He can feel dizzy from time to time and very often his eyes can hurt. These reactions are quite common but wrongly attributed to poor lighting, or studying too late at night, or any number of other incorrect reasons. The real cause is a lack of mass on the subject one is studying.

The remedy to this barrier is to supply the thing itself – in the example above, the tractor, or a reasonable substitute for one. Some educators have instinctively known this, but usually it was applied only to younger students and it certainly was never given the importance it warrants at any level of education.

The Third Barrier – Too Steep a Gradient

The next barrier is too steep a study gradient. That is, if a student is forced into undertaking a new action without having understood the previous action, confusion results.

There is a different set of physiological reactions which occur as a result of this barrier. When one hits too steep a gradient, a sort of confusion or 'reelingness' is experienced.

Commonly, the difficulty is ascribed to the new action, when in fact it really stems from the previous action. The person did not fully understand some part earlier and then went into confusion on the new one. This barrier to study is very pronounced in subjects involved with activity.

Take the example of a person learning to drive. He cannot properly coordinate his feet and hands to manually shift the car into another gear while keeping to one lane. The difficulty will be found to be in some earlier action about shifting gears.

Possibly he was not yet comfortable shifting through the gears with the engine off and the car at rest.

If this is recognized, the study gradient can be cut back to where the individual was still doing well, then the person can brought up to a point where they can easily shift the gears on a motionless car.

You will find they can perform the same action while the vehicle is in motion!