Animals can learn why not humans...?

  Nazish Jamali

America is considered a great and powerful country in the world. Although the number of cities in the United States is very high, according to the statistics collected in 2022, there are 200 large cities in the United States in terms of population, whose population is much larger than other cities. Three cities in the state of Massachusetts, Boston at 21^st, Worcester at 145^th, and Springfield at 181^st position are included in this list. Williamsburg is a small but charming city in the heart of the state of Massachusetts, USA.  Before the 1874^th century, hardly anyone had such information about this city. But this small town is inhabited by the pupil of the eye and the heartbeat of every educationist of today.

On August 31, 1874, in the small but beautiful town of Williamsburg in the state of Massachusetts, Edward Lee Thorndike was born in the house of Robert Thorndike and Abigail Brewster Ladd Thorndike. Today's world knows him only because of his great work. Every aspect of education has been linked to his views. He is said to be the second son of Robert Thorndike's four children. He learned to read at home and started going to school at the age of five. At the age of twelve, he began studying at Lowell High School in Boston. After that, he received his Bachelor's degree from Wesleyan University in 1891-1895. He studied with William James at Harvard University for two years and then in 1898 he received a degree of Ph.D. from Columbia University. It is written somewhere that he married Elizabeth Moulton at the age of 26 on August 29, 1900 (but somewhere his marriage age is said to be 23 years). He got married to her and had children, sometimes four children are said, and sometimes five, the real number may not be known to anyone. The soul of Prof. Edward Lee Thorndike departed this mortal world on 9^th August 1949, at the age of 75.

Edward Lee Thorndike did many experiments in his life, he is also called the father of modern educational psychology and the master of behavior because he did research in 1898 which was titled "Animal Intelligence". His doctoral thesis "Animal Intelligence" is considered by many psychologists to be the beginning of the scientific study of "animal behavior". In this study, Thorndike stated that if using the "animal intelligence" method similarly to experimenting on children, we can improve their intelligence also.

Thorndike also conducted the first major scientific study on "learning children" and the "learning methods" which are used by them, in which he proved that the growing age of children affects their learning abilities rarely. Because skills are like the wings of birds, even if you cut their wings, it will not affect their flight, because this flight is a gift given to birds by the Almighty. In the same way, no matter where a person is standing in life, his journey of learning continues till death. Social scientists also looked at the learning process of children with great interest, after which many new and innovative methods were introduced to teach children for their great learning outcomes including group discussion, use of moving pictures, audio and visual (listening and seeing) resources, teaching with the help of exhibits (showing things), field trips (i.e. taking children for a walk around the park if the theme of the park is to be taught), and drama includes performing the activities. Now, besides these, many new methods of teaching have been invented which aim only to teach the child and improve their learning.

 

The exploits of Thorndike:

Thorndike called the learning process a stimulus-response. This means that learning is not possible without motivation. A writer has written that "motivation is that, a man after falling, gets up in such a way that he didn’t fall". It is better to encourage every response of the learner during the learning process because this motivation can save the students from drowning in the river of failure. Motivation can be done in different ways such as giving praise, reward, or enticement.

In Thorndike's trial and error experiment he used a puzzle box, he was seen to effectively lock a starving cat in that puzzle box, he set a pulley in the middle of the cage’s roof. As the cat pulls the string attached to the pulley downwards then the door of the cage will open due to the removal of the hinge and the cat can eat the food (fish) placed in the bowl in front of it but the cat had no idea of such an act so it attempted so many trials for opening the door of that puzzle box to eat the fish. After many trials and errors finally, a time the door opens when the rope in the pulley hits a part of the cat's body and it pulls down, and then the cat ate that food.

If seen in action, Thorndike teaches a hungry cat to open the door by giving it a food lure or reward.  In which the cat succeeds after many failures. According to Thorndike, trial and error theory is not only for animals but it can be used on humans as well.  When any child or person tries to do any work, many mistakes are made in the beginning. After many trials, he is finally able to work properly.

It can be seen here that an innocent animal can learn different tricks due to a little effort and attention, so why not a human being...!? In my opinion, if we want to teach a subject matter with the same effort and attention to a student of any age, we can teach it in the best way but today in our society, the whole attention is devoted only to using mobile phones and gossiping about others, and we are so afraid of doing hard work, like rats from hunter cage, deer from lions, fishermen from giant crocodiles, rulers from voting, and sparrows afraid from a trap.