I just wanted you to put meat on the bones. :-}

I have trouble imagining my friends doing more …

But such persistence and single-mindedness is an amazing example.

Kathryn

Thanks for sharing this. Let me know if you have success with this approach!

Jordan

>What did the Odones do?

The Odones basically lived at a medical library for a while, hypothesized their own ideas about how to treat the disease, pestered highly skeptical researchers, and tracked down a chemist who was willing to synthesize lipid mixtures for them.

More at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Augusto_and_Michaela_Odone

>I have several friends whose children have severe illnesses.

Do you think there’s anything they can learn from the Odones’ approach?

Best,
J

Fun article! I think using a sight-word vocabulary corpus would reduce learning time. The Linkword strategy employed by many language learners works well. You match a familiar image to the sounds & meaning of the language. Then you bind these images together in a brief story.

Rehearsal is king. Rehearsal is king. Rehearsal is king. I’d go so far as to say “without rehearsal there is no learning.” Flashbulb memories, using a sense of smell, multiple intelligences,and other cool experimental methods might cut down the time, but again, rehearsal/practice will out.

I love that the mnemonists can memorize a deck of cards or random words in under a minute. I bet they still rehearse a lot. Their memory systems are just highly efficient.

What did the Odones do?

I have several friends whose children have severe illnesses. Most have been very active in the search for a cure. One family has raised lots of money for Friedrich’s Ataxia research ( http://www.curefa.org/families/thomas.asp ). Another has been very active pushing for treatment Pelizaeus-Merzbacher disease (http://www.jacobsladder.ca/pmd.html). Another has gotten a companion dog for a child with cerebral palsy (search for The Invisible Chair in http://www.provail.org/media/winter07.pdf ). And so on.

I think there’s a lot we can learn from people who face the crisis of a child diagnosed with a major disease for which there is no known cure. I’d like to hear more about what we can learn from the Odones.

Kathryn

> Crisis cuts through the B.S. sometimes doesn’t it? I really related to the mnemonist reference. I’ve studied foreign language intensively and, at its most basic, learning a language is crunching a bunch of words.

I agree that crisis can force you to forego what’s unnecessary or low-yield, and this may happen when people are forced to learn languages quickly. See this for an intriguing approach: http://www.fourhourworkweek.com/blog/2007/11/07/how-to-learn-but-not-master-any-language-in-1-hour-plus-a-favor/

It is a question of which model to borrow for a solution. Poverty often thrusts awkward but effective solutions to problems. I look at the pilgrims that came to America for one model. Life sucked at first but through determination and exploitation they made it. Following the puritans the yankees of New England were an industrious bunch. They could turn a piece of wire and some gum into a windmill, MacGyver-style.

A third example that I found fascinating was an exhibit at MassMoca, the Musuem of Contemporary Art in Western Massachusetts. A local warden had confiscated from felons a working wood lathe made from a ball-point pen, all manner of shanks, personal pleasure toys, batteries, darts, a blowgun, “kites” or secret messages folded super tight into tiny bits of paper, picture frames from origami-folded Doritos bags, etc. I have never forgotten that showcase of ratty merchandise. I would never have thought of such ingenious uses of rolled up toilet paper, tape, and time.

The cable show MythBusters and Consumer Reports also spring to mind when thinking about creativity.