Totally agreed. One of the favorite professors in college would introduce a theorem, and instead of jumping into proving it, would first show us useful applications of the theorem, and then prove it afterwards.
I can _only_ learn top-down. Facts without context are much less interesting and much more difficult to internalize. The incentive to understand, inspired by said context, is a prerequisite to mustering the motivation needed to to truly learn with sustained focus without losing interest. My ADHD brain will stop cooperating otherwise, and I’ll find myself daydreaming against my will!
This is exactly what I did as a grad student when I taught classes for my prof. She preferred bottom up and I preferred top down. I wanted to give people a reason for learning what they were getting ready to learn rather than "let's start from first principles" that almost all my professors wanted to do.
I prefer the exact same approach for learning to play board games too. Your 20 minutes of rules explanation will go completely over my head unless you start with "the goal/win condition of the game is to get more points/reach the end faster/collect all the macguffins".
yup. I have the same filter.
Aw god, Yes, Yes, Yes! I understand applications not abstractions so show me it's value and I'll understand it immediately, or give me a massive motivation to understand it if I don't. If they'd taken that approach at my schools and university I'd have been so much better off.