Osmosis Truly Works in Education
Camille Rodriquez
April 21, 2010
Students are funny. Sometimes they grasp a concept but don’t quite get it right. It happens that way all the time. Take for example the scientific term, osmosis. Sometime early in school, most students learn this word and take ownership of it, but the problem is that they learn it incorrectly. How many times have you joked yourself, or heard one of your children say something along the lines of, “I’m just going to put it under my pillow and learn by osmosis,” when they have a test or quiz coming up? We laugh about it, and realize that of course we don’t learn anything by sleeping on the material, but we’ve missed the point of osmosis, haven’t we. In a true sense, osmosis does work in learning, but it’s all about the movement!
You see, when students use osmosis this way, they are implying a lack of activity. They are implying that it will “just happen” by having the information near to their brains. They suggest that they don’t have to “do” anything. Of course they know that it won’t really work, and they’re just being silly, but they’re focusing on inactivity, when in fact, osmosis is all about the activity. In its most pure form, osmosis means movement across a barrier. That is going to take some action. Movement is physical and active. It will require some effort or a change in position. In order for osmosis to take place, from a scientific perspective, something has to change and move from one side to another, across a barrier.
So, too, we find that to be true in education. Whether you are a student or a teacher, learning in a homeschool, a private school, or a public school, you must change your relationship to the information you are learning by taking it in, processing it, and doing the work involved to master its content. So often our students fail to learn because they fail to “do.” Learning will require some effort – more effort for some students in some subject areas than others, but nonetheless, effort.
Does your student know how to study? How to learn? How to manipulate material into learning systems that can be used for making the information meaningful, applicable, and practical? Education must be about giving our students tools to use that will work on any subject if we truly want to teach and educate our students. It is not always about the content. Take the meaning of “osmosis” for example. The actual content of the term has been lost for many, many students because they looked for a “practical” application to the term and misapplied it. While they joke about an application that isn’t quite true, they did learn a shade of the word because it mattered to them. It had relevance.
Be sure that your student is getting help in true learning, finding relevance, and implementing methods that will help them achieve learning for any project or study that they take on. With the right learning tools and appropriate learning activities, any subject can be learned and information can be moved from the page, across the barrier of our brains, and into significance – through the correct application of osmosis!
by Camille Rodriguez