Puzzling

It was with mixed feelings of horror and amazement that I watched one of my 11-year-old patients do a jigsaw puzzle today, helped by the therapy assistant I work with.  It was a very simple puzzle of Winnie the Pooh and friends containing about 20 pieces, each one about 5cm square.  A 5- or 6-year-old could easily have done it.  But it was fascinating watching this kid and my colleague attempting to put two "outie" bits together (as opposed to an "innie" and an "outie").  Or a middle piece into the border.  Or two pieces that clearly had different pictures and did not belong together.

I know the kid may not have had too many opportunities to do jigsaw puzzles in his life, but it was unbelievable seeing how he was totally incapable of applying any kind of logic to it.  (You know - does the picture line up?  Do the shapes match?  Etc.)  Even more scary was that my colleague had no idea either.

This incident might help to explain how some of my frustrations come about.  Trying to teach in an interactive way is nigh on impossible - people aren't able to come up with their own answers.  They don't know how.  They expect to be told everything.  Their whole life, they've rote learnt information and regurgitated this in exams that don't require any application of the knowledge.  They ask "what?" but never "why?" and don't wonder "how?".  Things are black and white - there's no grey.  They have all these separate bits of knowledge but are not able to work out how to make all the bits fit together into the big picture.  Or how to make the bits fit into different situations.

I was just watching this kid thinking, "No wonder they struggle to find solutions to the many problems in this country when people can't even solve a jigsaw puzzle!"  You know - not taking into account all the complicating factors of poverty, corruption, gender inequality, environmental problems...

Yet another time when, after thinking about it all for ages, I just shook my head and said, "It's all fucked."