What Monkeys See But Don’t Do
What makes human beings different from other great apes? Here are some human capacities that have been suggested:
- Tool use: Sorry. Chimps on Madagascar make and use stone tools.
- Language: Nope. In addition to their native hoots and howls, great apes have learned to use—and create—hundreds of hand signs.
- Self-awareness: Wrong again. Though monkeys don’t recognize themselves in mirrors, great apes do.
- Empathy: Tell that to Koko the gorilla, who spent weeks mourning the death of her kitten, All Ball (which, by the way, she named).
- Learning: Um, have you ever heard of “monkey see, monkey do?”
- Hairlessness: Well, I’m not the right guy to advance that claim for humanity.
None of these capacities is uniquely human, but according to a recent NOVA special, one mental faculty that does differentiate us from our biological kin is the innate desire to teach.
Human beings want to teach the moment they begin to learn. Think of a 10-month-old who sees a bird in the yard and points to it. The child wants the parent to see the bird, wants to share the knowledge: “I want you to know this.”
That first teaching moment becomes the paradigm for all teaching moments. Cognitive scientist Rebecca Saxe says that teaching like this can happen due to a uniquely human capacity for “triadic attention.” In an interview on NOVA’s Website, she explains…
Humans…can pay attention to a special triplet of things, the triplet that’s me and another person and a third thing—a task or an object that we’re both thinking about, or talking about, or working on together. It’s the basic element of all cooperation and maybe most communication.…
Picture a parent and a child sitting together playing with blocks. In order to build something, both of them are adding pieces to the same structure. And they’re negotiating about it. Which piece goes where? Does the tower go here? Does the door go here? And they’re doing this project together. They have to negotiate it, and they have to play with each other at the same time that they’re both playing with the blocks. That’s the kind of coordination that humans do naturally. Two minds work together, watching each other and watching the object that they’re playing with. That’s the kind of thing apes don’t seem to do.
That’s teaching. This triadic attention could be simply represented as the following:
So that’s what a true teaching moment looks like—the natural interplay of teacher and student and subject. To teach, to really teach, you need to create a space in which the focus remains on all three points simultaneously.
That accomplishment is not easy. Here are three ways that the triadic attention can break down:
In each of these examples, the teaching moment is gone because one apex of the triangle is missing. There’s interaction, sure, but not triadic attention. True teaching involves all three parts—you, me, and it—in negotiation and play, coordination and tension.
Yes, there’s a bit of tension in any teaching moment—and that’s a sensation that great teachers learn to seek out. If there’s no possibility of failure or breakdown, there’s also no possibility of success or celebration. So, seek out the tension of the teaching moment, the moment when you and the student and the subject are all in play, and there’s no telling for sure where the three of you are going to end up.
And I should make one last observation: Since the desire to teach is innate in all of us, don’t be surprised if, in the teaching moment, you suddenly become the student and the student suddenly becomes the teacher. Your students want to teach you what they know, so learn from them. Model what it is to learn as well as what it is to teach.
Give it a try, and those great apes that come hooting and howling into your classroom may just turn out to be quintessentially human after all.
—Rob King
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