I just taught a dear friend how to knit, and in doing so I revisited how very challenging it is to teach something you can do easily.
Knitting, like so many of the skills we teach, including concrete skills like running a lathe and abstract ones like critical thinking, cannot be learned in theory. It is learned by doing. “Now you try,” I say after several slow, deliberate demonstrations of the motions. Oh my, such clumsy confusion. “Here, let me show you again.” I slow down even further and talk through the movements needed to make a stitch. Good gracious, I can hardly watch these tortured, truncated movements, so far from the peaceful, rhythmic flow of knitting. As the confusion continues, thoughts start going through my mind. How many times am I going to have to show her? It can’t possibly be this hard? And why am I feeling frustrated?