BRIGHTLINE LEARNING
BY CARL F. WELSER
Brightline learning is both bane and blessing. Firefighters and their fire departments–along with everyone else in the world–benefit and suffer from brightline learning. Brightline learning is a special case in the educational process. Ask anyone obliged to struggle with a new piece of computer software. You can accomplish a lot when you`ve learned to handle just five percent of the program`s potential. Five percent represents a few bright lines of learning. But you also realize there is much more to be learned between the lines.
Teaching, training, learning, and education–all sound similar. Some people use them interchangeably, the same way they might switch to a different brand of tire when the left front blows out on a trip and the regular brand is not available.
But nobody ever said it`s a good idea to mix tires on a car. It can confuse the suspension, traction, and steering. Nor is it a good idea to confuse teaching, training, and learning, even though all three pertain to the idea of education. Brightline learning requires unique treatment as well.
THE ORIGIN OF BRIGHTLINE
Brightline became a buzzword a few years ago. You still hear it. When an instructor drops the word into a management training session, it generally denotes something about your environment that attracts attention. People, performance, and statistics can all exhibit brightline moments.
The idea of a brightline is drawn from the jargon of the physics laboratory. Brightline studies refer to the exact analysis of the color spectrum produced by a burning substance: how much red, how much green, how much blue, and so on. The entire visible light spectrum displays seven color fractions altogether, aligned in honor of an obscure, old physics instructor, Roy G. Biv.
You may recall the colors in proper sequence: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, and violet. They appear so in every rainbow. You undoubtedly were taught the colors of the rainbow somewhere along the way. Whether or not you learned them well enough to remember them illustrates the elusiveness of brightline learning.
Brightline learning allows us to remember a few things most vividly. It occurs when a student is eager to learn and meets a persuasive instructor. The instructor may be a person. It may also be a personal experience.
Somewhere back in grade school a teacher told you about the discovery of helium in the solar spectrum. A very bright line in ordinary sunlight indicates the presence of a large quantity of something the scientists called “helium,” from the ancient Greek name for the sun, Helios. No doubt you were told about it. It may not have sunk in. Or you may have simply forgotten about it. If you still remember it, then consider it one of your brightline moments.
The bottom line is this: Brightline learning depends on whether you feel the need to know something at the moment and whether you enjoy a relationship with a capable teacher. There may be other variables. But these two will suffice for now.
Brightline learning is where we all begin. When we were very young, we quickly learned that a few things in our little world feel or taste really good. We remember them vividly. Hot or sharp things also leave a vivid impression. Those experiences rank among the first in a lifetime of brightline learning.
As valuable as brightline learning may seem, relying solely on a brightline education leaves the student with serious voids. There are no broad strokes of pretty reds, filled in with shades of greens and blues. Just a few brilliant, narrow lines, so painfully sharp they dazzle the eyes. Brightline learners carry those voids through life with them. They affect everything they touch, including the effectiveness of their fire departments.
A brightline education is inadequate because each bright line represents no more than a glittering slice of knowledge flanked by broad dark spaces on either side. There`s a lot of unexplored color in those dark spaces. But it feels safer to linger in the comfort of a few bright lines than to venture out into the darkness between them.
BRIGHTLINE LEARNING IS
COUNTERPRODUCTIVE
Brightline learning is counterproductive, in part because it is so indelible. The high cost of brightline learning is measured by the amount of remedial training needed to illuminate the dark spaces between a few bright lines.
Witness a real life example of counterproductive brightline learning. A small fire department proudly purchased its first “real” fire engine after years of making do with a series of jerry-built apparatus. The new engine boasted a four-stage, 500-gpm pump and a 1,000-gallon water tank. The acquisition of the new engine marked such a leap forward in local fire protection that the department hired an instructor to teach the members how to operate it to best advantage.
The firefighters were anxious to learn. Their minds were wide open. And the instructor ignited three bright lines for them:
1. Don`t bother shifting the pump into fourth-stage mode.
2. Always fill the water tank through the lid in the hosebed on top.
3. Never try drafting directly into the pump through the soft suction intake.
Convincing rationales were offered for each bright line. According to the sacred arguments, the fourth stage discharged a reduced volume at higher pressure, whereas the instructor advised maximum volume at all times. Using the fill hole for the water tank atop the hosebed meant that the incoming water wouldn`t have to push against water already in the tank and therefore should flow in faster. And applying pump suction to an incoming 212-inch supply line would collapse it and cut off the water supply forever, leaving the hapless engine without water at a crucial moment.
Persuasive instructor meets students primed to learn. Three bright lines of learning–regrettably inaccurate–burned their way into their brains forever. In all fairness to the instructor, his time was limited and his assignment overly broad.
Old-timers passed these glittering bright lines along to newcomers year after year. They proved so indelible that none of the original students could be persuaded of the following:
The pump`s fourth stage might have a real purpose in certain situations.
Attaching a 212-inch supply line directly to the pump intake might offer another useful way of filling the onboard tank–not to mention furnishing water to the pump more quickly.
The application of a reasonable amount of suction to an incoming supply line provides a welcome assist to the overworked portable pump laboring down at the lake 500 feet away and does little harm, since woven-jacket fire hose has a way of recovering quickly from a collapse.
Brightline learning can be costly. The fourth-stage rotor sat idle in its own corrosive volute until one day, during a heated battle against a barn fire, it blew all to pieces, taking the rest of the pump with it. Lubrication of the rotor with a fresh batch of water by occasionally shifting it into gear might have extended the life of the pump considerably.
MODERN DAY BRIGHT LINES
There are 19 chapters in the older Essentials of Firefighting (IFSTA, 3rd edition). The current Michigan Firefighter I/II curriculum adds six additional modules for a total of 25 topics. In the worst-case scenario, you can count on freshly certified brightline learners returning to the fold holding aloft approximately 20 bright lines of learning, one for each topic, minus an absence of two plus a couple of sleepy days while attending the firefighter academy. They will defend these bright lines to the death as their main source of illumination across vast expanses of darkness.
One of the brighter bright lines in recent years has been the emphasis on directly attacking a fire at its point of origin. Now, there is no question that a direct, interior attack is more elegant and superior to any other method of structural firefighting when conditions dictate. But there are times when any method can be called into question.
When the freshly taught brightliners come home insisting on launching an interior attack against a six-foot-high trash fire inside an 8 2 10 storage shed in someone`s backyard, here is evidence of brightline learning run amuck. The best method is whatever is best for the situation.
An observer once watched a neighboring fire department lose the battle in a small, L-shaped ranch house while the requisite two- in/two-out team gathered for a direct attack on a fire in the front bedroom. The seat of the fire was plainly visible through a downwind bedroom window not more than eight feet from the staging area. The eventual route of attack would enter through the front door, make two left turns, and come back down a hallway into the bedroom.
The observer held a charged 112-inch line at the ready for the attack team while they assembled for action. He was standing right next to the window. To this day, he regrets that he didn`t accidentally swing the nozzle against the window, thus bashing it open. Nor did he accidentally open the bail, thus starting a flow of water. Nor did he accidentally spray enough water through the broken window to extinguish the fire at a manageable stage. He would have apologized profusely afterward to all persons concerned for his obvious clumsiness.
But one must always be cautious about messing with any organization`s standard operating procedures, especially when they lean heavily on brightline learning. You can get in trouble that way.
On the brighter side, for better or for worse, brightline learning is still preferable to a life lived only in shades of gray. n
CARL F. WELSER is a 32-year veteran of and training officer for the Hamburg (MI) Fire Department, Inc. He is an EMT-S and a certified FFI/II, has a master`s of divinity degree and master`s of science (biology), and is a member of the Fire Engineering editorial advisory board.
