For those of you not curious enough to click on the link above, here is a list of some typical characteristics of right brained learners:
- thinking in pictures rather than words
- extraordinarily vivid imaginations
- sensitive and intense
- thrives on complexity - hard is easy and easy is hard
- excellent visual memory
- mechanical ability - love to take things apart
- natural gift with puzzles, mazes or numbers
These are just a few and right brained learners will show some of these characteristic strongly and others not at all. Most right brained learners are intensely curious and driven to learn those things that they are fascinated with and they want to do it themselves.
Which brings me back to Peter the Great. Currently in my research, I am reading through the fascinating tome of Peter's life by Robert K. Massie: Peter the Great, His Life and World Several sections have struck me with the idea that it is highly likely that Peter was right brain dominant. Let me find a relevant passage...
From page 134:
His most extraordinary quality, even more remarkable than his height, was his titanic energy. He could not sit still or stay long in the same place...The most accurate image of Peter the Great is of a man who throughout his life was perpetually curious, perpetually restless, perpetually in movement.
Peter's curiosity and vision for his country led him to learn, by doing with his own hands, shipbuilding, sailing, dentistry, surgery, and barbering (all that cutting off of beards). While growing up and before the time when he took a more active role as tzar, Peter amused himself with war games as other little boys are wont to do except that Peter's involved real men and real weapons - with Peter overseeing and in the midst of all of the various preparations and maneuvers, never simply giving orders and leaving it to others to carry out at a distance.
In his endeavors, Peter started out at the bottom, at least as much as any tzarevich could manage, and worked his way up, wanting to learn all the various parts along the way for himself. In his peacetime war maneuvers, he dressed and marched as a simple artilleryman. In the second campaign on Azov, Peter went as captain of a vessel rather than as admiral.
Here is another passage (p.198) from the time of Peter's Great Embassy to Europe:
All along the road from Amsterdam to The Hague, Peter kept seeing new things. Passing a mill, Peter asked, "What is this for?" Told it was a mill to cut stones, he declared, "I want to see it." The carriage stopped but the mill was locked. Even at night, crossing a bridge, Peter wanted to study its construction and take measurements. That carriage stopped again, lanterns were brought and the Tsar measured the bridge's length and width, He was measuring the depth of its pontoons when the wind blew out the lights.
This puts me strongly in mind of my youngest son. In his only formal school experience, two weeks in an in home preschool, the teacher had this to say on his evaluation: focuses on unusual objects for long periods of time; enjoys this more than interaction with others. Accurate observation at the time; however, I declined to accept her suggestion to have him psychologically dissected as my mother's intuition pulled strongly in the direction that he was okay, just different.
Peter the Great was also very different. And it was those differences that allowed him to conceive, hold onto, and nearly singlehandedly bring to fruition a vision of dragging his Russia kicking and screaming into the modern age. While his methods were often brutal and insensitive to say the least, the sheer breadth of his accomplishments within a single lifetime is staggering. And, I truly believe, largely a result of being the type of learner who sees the big picture.
