Mehkurydiaries

In a remote village in Enugu State, I taught Basic Science and Basic Technology to junior secondary students. The curriculum contained electricity, ecosystems, machines and materials. The children were not short of intelligence. They were often short of explanations that remembered where they were starting from. That classroom taught me something: complexity is sometimes unavoidable. Confusion is not. DNA is complex. A power grid is complex. So is a national budget, a software architecture or a doctrine of faith. Serious subjects have layers. But layers are not fog. Some experts wear obscurity like ceremonial clothing. The audience leaves confused, and the speaker leaves feeling profound. Fog is not altitude. Research on cognitive load shows that poor instructional design can consume mental capacity needed for learning. Jargon can do something similar: it forces the reader to spend strength opening the box before meeting the idea inside it. This does not mean every truth must be red...