The learning methods and training details of Harvard's top students

Chapter 15 Learning Creatively, Walking Out of the Extraordinary Road (2)
Harvard advocates free thinking.If you walk into a Harvard classroom and find that some students don't sit upright in chairs, but prefer to lie on the carpet with their heads resting on their schoolbags, listening to lectures and drinking drinks at the same time, don't be surprised, because other students, Even the professor himself didn't think there was anything wrong with it.This kind of freedom and individuality is exactly what Harvard tradition advocates and maintains.A school that allows all students to sit in class according to a standard movement will definitely make all students "think" in a standard way.

In 1995, the Irish poet Heaney, who won the Nobel Prize in Literature, opened a poetry class in the English Department.He is very poetic and hates teaching poetry to students in a classroom with closed windows, as if it would suffocate life.So he set up the classroom on the lawn, and let the students form a circle, under the jumping sunlight, the shade of the trees shaking gently like water, on the lawn that evaporated the earthy smell, the flowing air and the rushing to and fro Feel the poetry among the squirrels.

【Harvard view】

With the wings of imagination, you can fly higher and farther
Rich imagination is a powerful driving force for learning, it can show a bright future in front of people, and encourage people to engage in creative learning with great energy.Only with rich imagination can our learning be creative. In the process of learning, we will find that learning is also a kind of fun.

The amazing imagination shown by the famous French writer Jules Verne is well known to many people.Before the invention of radio, he had thought of television. He had thought of helicopters and airplanes half a century before the Wright Brothers made airplanes. He had imagined tanks, missiles, submarines, neon lights, etc. in advance.In "Travel to the Moon", he even talked about a few artillerymen sitting on the shells and letting the cannon launch them to the moon.It is said that Zielsky, one of the pioneers of space travel, was inspired by Verne's works and pushed him to engage in theoretical research on interstellar travel.

Verne published science fiction novels such as "From the Earth to the Moon" and "Around the Moon", and put forward a bold idea of ​​flying to the moon.He imagined digging a silo hundreds of meters deep on the earth, casting a large cannon barrel in the well, and launching the carefully designed "cannonball carriage" to the moon.He even chose the closest time to leave the earth, calculated the minimum speed needed to overcome gravity, and how to solve the problem of oxygen supply in the sealed "cannonball compartment", which was very inspiring for later aerospace research.

Russian scientist Tsiokowski was called a "bold visionary" in his youth. He imagined future space navigation as 15 steps.It is amazing that when Tsiokowski made this bold vision, the Wright brothers' plane had not yet come out.At that time, apart from skyrocketing firecrackers, there were no rockets in the world. What is even more surprising is that many imaginations have become a living reality through the development of aviation and aerospace technology in recent decades.In other words, with the successive successes of rockets, jet planes, artificial satellites, the Apollo moon landing program, space orbital stations, and space shuttles, Tsiokowski's first few steps have been basically realized.

The richer the image in the mind, the wider and deeper the imagination, the stronger our imagination.Therefore, you have to keep in contact with various things in daily life, so that these things will leave a deep impression on your mind, and these impressions are the material for your rich imagination.

The future world will pay more and more attention to imagination. Imagination can be said to be the greatest asset of human beings. Only with free and unrestrained imagination can we carry out creative learning.To cultivate a rich imagination, you must be innovative in the process of learning, rather than gnawing at textbooks.Concentrating on listening to the teacher's lectures during class is also very helpful for cultivating imagination.

Someone once used a vivid metaphor to illustrate the role of imagination in creative and dynamic learning.Creative learning is like a vigorous eagle, objective knowledge is the body of the eagle, and imagination is its wings.Because the eagle has wings, it can roam in the sky and flutter its wings in the sky.Imagination has a great influence on creative learning, it is the driving force of creative learning.

In the process of learning, don't hide in your own small world, go out bravely, the outside world is more exciting.When you are on vacation, try to go to the wild to get close to nature and experience the wonders of nature deeply.Not only that, but we also actively participate in social activities.If you only pay attention to book knowledge and shut yourself in the room all day long, so that book knowledge and practice are seriously disconnected, you will become "water without a source, tree without roots", and it is not conducive to the development of imagination.

[Easy interaction]

take a test

There is a fill-in-the-blank question: 1( )+2( )=1( )
A. Student A's answer:
A frame + two lenses = a pair of glasses

One head + two hands = a lifetime of happiness
One eye + two noses = a monster
B. High school student B's answer:
one baby + two parents = one family
One handsome guy + two beauties = a romance movie
One man + two women = one tragedy

C. Pupil C’s answer:
one zero + two zeros = one zero
One fritter + two eggs = [-] points
One hungry fox + two chickens = one full fox
One "wood" + two "wood" = one "sen"

What is your answer?Compare them to see if your imagination outshines them all.

【Parent-child total product】

Imaginative training methods include:
1. Rich emotional image

We must broaden our horizons in social practice, and try to expand our reserves of various images of nature and human society.Social surveys, visits, tours, appreciation of film and television songs and dances, and reading books can all expand the image reserve.

2. Borrow "Hazy" imagination

Many scientists are good at thinking about problems in a sleepy state.By using the hazy method, some unexpected similarities between things can be found, thus triggering imagination and inspiration.

3. Fusion of imagination and judgment

A sound imagination can only work together with sound judgment.A rich imagination requires both active thinking and correct judgment.

4. Practice metaphors, analogies, and associations
Metaphors and analogies are the flowers of the imagination.Using metaphors often can make the imagination active.When reading a novel, you can consciously stop at the critical moment, imagine the various development trends of the story, and then compare the writing methods of the novel to get inspiration from it.Watch TV series to practice episode by episode.

5. Make more random imaginations

You must let go of your imagination first, and then modify or delete the inappropriate parts. It is difficult to produce excellent imagination with rigid thinking.

【Harvard view】

Creative learning guides the shortcut to success
Almost every successful story of scientists tells us that they are able to innovate continuously and dare to question everything in the process of learning. It is this kind of creative learning that guides them to climb the peak of science step by step.

Wiener, an American mathematician and professor at Harvard University, was never satisfied with one solution when he was a child.Wiener started learning mathematics when he was 3 years old, and began to study mathematical problems in depth when he was 7 years old.In high school, he ran into a mediocre math teacher.One day, when the teacher handed out the test papers, he first handed out the test papers of the students he thought were good students, then the middle ones, and finally the test papers of the students he thought were the worst.When the last one was sent, he shouted sharply: "Weina! Why are you wrong so much?"

It turned out that Wiener used his own "direct method" to solve the problem, which was different from the method in the book. For this matter, the math teacher criticized him for a long time.

"Teacher, I actually have a reason for doing this!" Weiner said unconvinced.

Facing the teacher's accusation, he stepped up to the podium confidently and wrote down the problem-solving method he created on the blackboard for analysis. The students all thought that his problem-solving method was also correct, and the teacher had no choice but to let him go down.

In his subsequent mathematical research, Wiener always insisted on thinking more about solutions to each problem. It was his persistence in learning creatively and thinking more about solutions that made Wiener a famous mathematician in the future.

Creativity in childhood is spontaneous and naive, and spontaneous and naive creativity will not last long.In fact, the creativity of ordinary people is like a flash, fleeting.And once scientists are aroused curiosity, the flame of thinking it ignites will not be extinguished until the problem is completely solved.Therefore, if you want to be successful in learning, creativity alone is not enough, but you must continue to follow creative learning, ignite the flame of thinking, and lead learning to depth.

[Easy interaction]

1. How does the story of Weiner's creative learning inspire you?
2. In your usual study, will you use creative methods to solve the problems you encounter?List the methods you and your classmates use to communicate.

【Parent-child total product】

Creative learning methods are:
1. To stimulate one's rich imagination and improve the level of creativity.

2. Explore the source and hide.In learning, think from the connection of things.Tracing the cause of accidental discovery, while mastering knowledge, exploring the source and concealment, and tracing the ideas of predecessors discovering and inventing laws, theorems and formulas.From looking for various reasons for things, explore innovative ways of thinking, and inspire yourself to come up with solutions to problems.

3. Be good at comparison and open up ideas from comparison.Do not seek the only correct answer, but "force" yourself to achieve the same goal through different ideas.From the comparison, discover new problems, new situations, different solutions to old problems, and new changes in known situations, so that one's desire for creativity can be stimulated in the persistent pursuit.

4. Three-dimensional thinking.It is necessary to study all aspects, all connections and "intermediaries" of the object of cognition.Connect vertically and horizontally, think three-dimensionally, discover problems and discover various relationships related to problems from the connection of all aspects of things, so as to obtain solutions to problems.

(End of this chapter)