Teaching Is Like Purifying Water

Steve Clarke was relating an experience he had recently. He works for Compassion Canada and was in Kosovo, Uganda to evaluate a project they had been working on there. (http://www.compassion.ca/communityprojects/compro.cgi?Project=KWP&ProjectType=Health) One of the aspects of this project was to help provide sanitary
water for the people there. Along with building giant water containers to collect fresh rain water from the rooves of homes, his organization also had a second, simple solution.

The water supplies that the children usually use tend to be small holes of highly contaminated water that is rife with various diseases and bacteria. According to this site (http://www.sodis.ch/Text2002/T-HowDoesItWork.htm), the easiest way to purify such water is to bottle it in a clear, thin container and leave it in direct sunlight for 6 hours. Voila, almost all of the harmful contents are destroyed by the UV rays and heat.

Steve's team has a plan to introduce the neighbourhood to this simple purification process. Much to their surprise, they received incredulous responses from the people they told. Some people even went so far as to say they refused to believe it at all until they were given absolute proof. Even after a full presentation explaining the process and the science behind it, people still refused to accept the idea - it was so easy, it couldn't possibly be true. Fortunately for Steve's group, 3M has (recently?) developed a means to visibly show the diseases that are carried in a drop of water, so they were actually able to prove the solution first-hand.

To continue from yesterday's post, I think this is how a lot of people approach learning. Why should we trust the person teaching us? Why should we trust the evidence presented? Give me more evidence, give me better evidence - and then I might agree with you, maybe. Why shouldn't we be insulted by the insinuation that we don't understand something?

If you reject good teaching, from whatever source, then you keep using a contaminated water supply.