BHP Lesson 23: Collective Learning

We often teach dogs a few basic tricks: sit, stay, and fetch. However, have you ever seen dogs teach one another tricks? Dogs mimic behavior, but they can’t pass on new knowledge. If they could, we wouldn’t have to train them! Alphonse the Camel is back to co-host this episode on what makes collective learning uniquely human.

Driving Question: What is collective learning?

  • Progress and innovation often require a collective effort, and those efforts often last beyond the lifetime of one individual. It took generations for us to invent the complex computers we use today. Each generation of innovators builds upon the ideas of thinkers before them. Isaac Newton acknowledged that his great discovery of gravity built upon the progress made by scientists before him: “If I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.” So what is collective learning? Are humans the only species with the ability to learn collectively?

Word of the Day: Collective Learning

  • Definition: The ability to share, preserve, and build upon ideas over time.
  • Collective learning is the distinctly human ability to share and preserve knowledge, which allows us to build on ideas over time and advance at a rapid rate in comparison to other species of animals. The key to this ability is the fact that humans communicate more accurately and efficiently through symbolic language.

Lesson

  • Go to Khan Academy and read the article by David Christian, “Collective Learning (Part 1).”
  • As you read, keep track of the important characteristics of collective learning. What is it? What isn’t it? Pay close attention to the important role of symbolic language in our ability to learn collectively. 

Historian’s Journal Prompt

  • How are we more prepared today for pandemics compared to people of the past?
  • In your journal today, think about all of the collective learning that prepared us to deal with the outbreak of COVID-19 on a global scale. You might also want to think about the global cooperation focused on trying to understand the disease. Organizations like the Center for Disease Control (CDC) and the World Health Organization (WHO) are critical in building and passing on our collective knowledge.
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