Thinking and learning
-
- March
- 23
An article in the spring 2009 edition of “American Educator” poses an interesting argument for why some students don’t like school.
The short answer is “because the mind is not designed for thinking.”
Author Daniel T. Willingham, a cognitive psychology professor at the University of Virginia, writes that the brain is designed to help people NOT think. The article is an except from Willingham’s new book, “Why Don’t Students Like School?”
The brain devotes a lot of space to vision and movement and less space to reasoning. Willingham described reasoning as slow, uncertain and involving effort, saying the brain would rather rely on memory. And while people enjoy solving problems, they don’t enjoy working on something that’s too hard and they can’t solve, or something too easy.
If schoolwork is too hard or not rewarding, students’ minds just don’t want to do it, seems to be the inference.
This entry was posted
on Monday, March 23rd, 2009 at 10:54 am by Randi Weiner.
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