Vintage

I read an article about 5 years ago by a History scholar.  The article wasn't about history, however, but about teachers of history.  He had conducted research and was reporting on the way history professors presented their material in the classroom.  Particularly, he compared the organizational patterns of their material as it was presented to students.  He found that professors with 10 years or more could easily move between the connection points (the episodes making up an event) than the professors with fewer years.

That finding seems like a no-brainer on the surface.  However, one reason he used professors in his research and not other kinds of teachers, such as high school teachers, is that the university teacher is considered an expert in the field.  They should be the ones to make connections within an event with ease because of the sheer amount of information they have at their disposal.  It would appear that more information would translate into ability to make connections that less information would prohibit.  Not so.  The experience of using the information in different settings, over time, with different kinds of personalities, and in repetition after reflection influences the effectiveness of the types of connections professors are able to make.

I thought of that study when a language teacher I spoke to last week mentioned that she had a student learning English who could not understand the Subject-Verb-Object order of English enough to produce grammatically correct sentences.  She was frustrated with him and offered expletives about his personality, which she had attributed to the reason for his lack of understanding.  As it turns out, the teacher was one without 10 years of teaching experience, less experience with a variety of languages (even though she was bilingual), and without exposure to the backgrounds of people from the area of the world the student was from or to the nature of the language the student spoke which used a reverse phrase order in use of headwords.

What is true with wine is true with humans, too.  The flavors of new wine and vintage wine are very different.  Vintage wines are so robust with flavor.