The Problem with Swiss Cheese
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Why is Swiss cheese the only kind of cheese with holes? In the cooking process there’s a combination of bacteria and hay particles in the milk that can make bubbles of carbon dioxide. The bubbles usually bust leaving a hole, or what cheese connoisseurs know as an eye. Swiss cheese without a hole is considered blind cheese.
The problem with Swiss cheese is when we apply it to our learning. When I was in school, I really enjoyed math. Well, I enjoyed it up until about seventh grade. Algebra came into the picture and suddenly everything I should have been learning for the past seven years was meshed together and used regularly. My peers performed well, but I struggled. I couldn’t understand why something that I was good at seemed like such a foreign language now.
Fast forward to my third year teaching elementary school. I was handed a fifth-grade math class, and I didn’t know any of the material. Exponents? Letters? When did these become a fifth-grade thing?
I knew I had to know my stuff and be confident in the material, so I began studying. As I reviewed the material, I would remember learning the concepts, but I was having to teach myself all over again. What happened to make this material not stick in my brain?
One day, while I reviewed the fifth-grade standards, I had a grand epiphany. Everything in math built on the previous concept. These weren’t isolated skills, they were steppingstones that had to be mastered, not just learned for a test and then thrown aside. That was why I had not done well in algebra and beyond—my math foundation looked like Swiss cheese.
I spent that year beginning with the basics and building a firm foundation, plugging in all the holes in my Swiss cheese. Math made sense again and I began to love it once more. And I purposed to teach my students the importance of mastering math, not just learning it for the test.
My oldest son and I sat together wrestling through eighth grade algebra recently. At first, I struggled to remember, but once I refreshed myself on rules and procedures, we were able to make it through successfully. It’s easy to learn something in the moment and then forget it later. I can look back at my own Swiss cheese faith and see the evidence. I keep revisiting the same lessons because I don’t take the time go back to the basics and make the truths a part of my daily walk with Christ. Reminds me of the Israelites, always rebelling in the same ways for forty years and not really learning the lesson.
This week, check yourself. Do you practice a Swiss cheese type of learning where there are constant holes and having to learn and relearn again the hard way? Or are you building your foundation solidly on the Rock? Food for thought.
