Born Trainer

A child may be interested in playing. The playing may result in lots of exploration  and discoveries. The child becomes interested in exploration for its own sake. A chain of interest is started from playing to exploring.

A person interested in discovering and learning may become interested in physics. The more he explores and learn about physics the closer he gets to and uses mathematics. His interest might then ‘chain’ ahead towards mathematics and he might become deeply fascinated with mathematics for its own sake regardless of its use in physics and even regardless of any practical use it might have in any other field.

The chain of interest is a powerful principle and can be used to lead others into loving things they initially had no interest in.  Let us take an example of how the chain of interest principle may work in a settings of learning programming.

There are two popular paths that lead to great computer programmers who have deep love for programming. The first path is when a person is interested in achieving some specific result such as playing a game, seeing an animation or any other thing and finds the code that accomplishes such result and types it in to achieve what he wishes. This interest in the initial result and the satisfaction one gets from accomplishing it through typing in the ready code may lead later to an interest in programming itself.

Another more popular path is for someone using a program waning to modify such program in order to better suit his or her needs. This might lead the person to start entering the then tough world of programming. The strong interest in achieving the customization desired or the idea that person has in mind would let him or her manage to go through the difficulties of first learning how to program. The satisfaction such person would get from accomplishing what was in his or her mind might lead him or her to start loving programming in its own sake. Programming to such person might become addictive and the love for it would be deep.

Conversely, suppose some programming teacher tries to shove programming concepts down the brain of children who have no previous knowledge of programming nor interest for it. In such case, the result would be high resistance for the programming concepts and a long term, yet recoverable, damage to the ability of such children to love programming one day. Without chaining the love for programming to those children through something else they already love, such as computer games, it is not possible make great programmers out of them.

The role of an computer instructor is to galvanize the interest of students towards what they are learning and make them pull out the information themselves rather than the instructor attempting to push the information into their brains. This can best be done through heightening the interest of students on what they are learning through various means all along the training course. This should be the primary role of any computer instructor during a training course.