HAPPY NEW YEAR

I read a tweet this morning which was quoted as being from Socrates, it read:

“I cannot teach anybody anything, I can only make them think”

I have no idea how accurate that quote is.  I’m not a great lover of tweets which are simply quotes as it seems a rather lazy tweet in my eyes, but this one this morning did strike a chord with me.  That then spurred me into tweeting about how important it is to have your brain fully engaged when driving.... if you care to view them, they are listed on my Twitter page under the name of “Tukkr”.

As the day went on though, I found myself thinking more and more about this quote.  It is true that I like to encourage my learners and trainee driving instructors to be mentally fully engaged while driving.  If I pass on tools and techniques that encourage that mental work then that is one aspect of that quote.  One such tool that I have been developing for 6 hrs today is ‘commentary driving’.  This is the process by which the driver is encouraged to verbalise what they see/hear/feel, and then state how that information then dictates how they drive.  So it is kind of ‘cause and effect’.  When a driver does this well, you can hear how well that person is anticipating potential hazards, you can hear how soon they are identifying potential hazards, and you can hear how soon they are then planning to deal with those hazards.  It is one thing ‘reading’ the need to do something, it is entirely something else to be able to verbalise that decision making process and state what your intended actions are AS A RESULT of that analysis.  This is a big task for most of us.  Not only is there the skill in being able to take in all the relevant information, but you need to be able to prioritize it and then adjust your driving to suit the needs, and this is all done with you actually saying about it all BEFORE you do it..... quite some skill.    

But another aspect of that quote is to consider how I teach the actual physical act of driving.... the hands on the steering wheel, the feet on the pedals, where the eyes need to look and when.  My experience with pupils so far tells me that some people want, even need to be told what to do and when.  Others are far more willing to embrace the methodology of independent learning.  And this is an aspect that has been niggling away in my head all day. 

It’s good for me to consider how much of my instruction has been a direct order, how much a very open question to encourage thought, how many times have I not said anything and let driving faults safely occur to then analyse them after the event.  It’s been interesting to see how much prompting I give to raise the awareness of a particular feature of the drive.  What proportion of my words are positive feedback, how much do I criticise the outcomes and how much personal reflection do I encourage.  The fact of the matter is that it is perfectly possible and very common for a driving instructor to simply CONTROL this particular phase of learning to drive.  It is extremely easy to just verbally instruct a pupil how to drive:

“Look in this mirror now” (pointing to central mirror)

“Come off the gas now with your right foot”

“Gently press the middle pedal now until I tell you take it off”

“With your left foot put the clutch pedal fully down”

“Press this indicator upwards when I say......... ok now” (pointing to indicator arm)

It is depressing to witness this kind of instruction.  For the instructor it is boringly simple, for the pupil it is stiflingly restrictive.  If you carry on doing this for long enough, you will eventually condition the pupil to know what to do.  The pupil is not discovering anything independently, basically they are just doing as they are told.  It’s the same for driving instructor training, some trainers simply condition their pupil to pass the tests.  Watching a trainers video footage of him saying the following makes for cringe worthy viewing:

“Watch me, watch my eyes.... where am I NOT looking?”

“No, I’ve told you a hundred times before, you cannot use the word ‘right’, you have to say ‘correct’, got it?”

“When though, when..... WHEN do I signal?”

Oh it’s painful to watch.  It’s the exact opposite of the Socrates quote.  It’s actually “Stop..... now listen, if you don’t listen to me and watch what I do, then you will not pass the test.  Stop thinking too much about this and just copy what I do.  Got it?”