Learning & Emotion

Larry Baum, in IdeaExplore wrote,

I was disappointed by the tremendous amount of news time devoted to just one person, Terri Schiavo, in the past few weeks, compared to the little time devoted to millions of people in wars in Congo or Darfur, or suffering preventable deaths from malaria or TB. Just one measure of this imbalance: a Google search for "Terri Schiavo" gave 10.4 million hits, but a Google search for "malaria" gave only 6.4 million hits. This made me realize that many people can't feel empathy for numbers. They need a face and a story on which to hang their emotions, even if the result is a very illogical imbalance in priorities. Stalin knew it; he said "A single death is a tragedy, a million deaths is a statistic."

This is also true for learning.

Hundreds of experience pass through us daily. Why some stick and become memorable and some get forgotten?

By linking one's learning into some emotions, the learning stays. I suppose it is so for appeal. As Larry further suggested

To redress this, it may be necessary to purposefully play on emotions by picking one person to represent all those suffering from some problem.

To redress for teaching and learning
it may be necessary to purposefully play on emotions by picking one dramatic situation to represent all those similiar problem situations.