Two pyramids. One of them is a myth.

A slightly different format today.

We have published two big articles on the blog.

Two topics you hear a lot about right now, and about which people read all sorts of things.

So we dug into the sources, and we are putting both here, with the links. Read them the way you would read an article a colleague passes along, to stay up to date with what is being said.

The first is the learning pyramid. Type those words into Google and you will land on two pyramids that share the same name. The first lines up percentages: supposedly we retain 10% of what we read and 90% of what we teach. The second starts from the nervous system and the senses, and climbs floor by floor up to academic learning.

One of the two is a myth. The other changes the way you look at a child who struggles with writing, or an athlete who fails to take on an instruction that is simple enough. Which is which, where it comes from and where its limits lie, it is all in the article on the pyramid.

A review someone left us last year already said it: "Useful from the child struggling at school to the athlete!"

The second is the tickle. You may have seen the video go by. Someone brushes the sole of a foot, and the person doubles over laughing. Thirty seconds of firm thumb pressure under the arch, you try again, and nothing. The legend talks about reprogramming the nervous system.

The effect is real, and you can reproduce it in a session tomorrow. Except it does not show what people think it shows, and it does not last. We believed it too, before we truly understood the touch sensors. The article on the tickle explains what happens under the thumbs during those thirty seconds, and why a before-and-after wrapped up in five minutes proves nothing.

What you see in a child is often just the top floor.

Both are free to read on the blog. And if you only have time for one, take the pyramid.

Are you reading the pyramid with a specific child in mind, and would you like us to look at it with you? Request an assessment. And if you are a practitioner and the training appeals to you, book a call with the team, and we will look together at whether it is the right moment for you.