Comments on: Understanding is Remembering in Disguise

By: Trevor_Memory

Trevor_Memory — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 17:46:53 +0000

That is why it is easier to gather knowledge in something that you really liked about because it makes you focus more.

By: gweipo

gweipo — Sun, 10 May 2009 12:03:57 +0000

I’m also interested in the ‘paying attention’ part of things. It seems that so many kids have ADHD or ADD, and I’d assume the 1st step would be paying attention to information at the source (i.e in the classroom) prior to the revision, practise, solving problems etc. etc. The act of conscious listening would allow memories and linkage already in existence to be ‘prickled’ and surely would speed up the whole process?

Conversely, could practise and repitition and focus on memorisation improve the circuits that help attention? I’ve heard of learning music for example being used as therapy for AD/HD.

By: pm

pm — Thu, 26 Mar 2009 17:58:54 +0000

I just meant thinking that was not having an active interaction with consciousness. For example if someone has an “Aha!” moment I’m assuming there was prior thinking happening that the person was not aware of.

By: Dan Willingham

Dan Willingham — Thu, 26 Mar 2009 17:32:50 +0000

PM: I have been considering the attentional demand as part of the reason that thinking is difficult. So when I say thinking is slow, effortful, and uncertain, I meant the attentional demand when I said “effortful.”

We also need to think about different aspect of attention. When I said “effortful” I really meant “demanding.” You can’t deploy attention elsewhere because it’s focused on the task. but that doesn’t mean that it is necessarily hard to focus attention on the task. (that is, you might be absorbed in it, and not be tempted to turn attention another way.)

I’m still not sure what you consider unconscious thinking. there are several ways that this term might be interpreted. . . .

By: pm

pm — Thu, 26 Mar 2009 15:02:14 +0000

Ooops, somehow my comment ended up associated with the wrong blog entry. I had intended to comment on your “Why Students don’t like School” entry. To preserve the thread I’ll continuer here.

So I’ve distilled a number of your statements into: It’s difficult for brains to think. I’m also assuming that conscious thinking requires paying attention. And that paying attention is also difficult. So can we separate the difficulty of paying attention from the difficulty of thinking for conscious thinking? I’m particularly curious about this question because the results of unconscious thinking appear to come so automatically and easily. I’m discounting the conscious preparation stages as that also requires paying attention.

By: michael mazenko

michael mazenko — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 18:23:01 +0000

This insight is dead on for much of what ails the education system. In her book on literacy (I Read It But I Don’t Get It), Cris Tovani argued for the integral importance of effective readers using background knowledge to make sense of new information. Thus, without those fundamentals of knowledge, nearly all learning becomes much more difficult. That one reason is why children of lower socio-economic status risk never catching up in school. It’s also why exit standards and K-12 vertical teaming are indispensable in a k-12 curriculum. This sort of insight and analysis must become part of a much larger discussion of school reform.

By: Dan Willingham

Dan Willingham — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 17:55:33 +0000

Diana–Believe it or not, I am without a copy of mine own book right now–gave ‘em all away–so I cannot do the decoding that you asked about. Thanks for your other observations.
John–The Lehrer study sounds interesting and def. fits with some laboratory data showing that people can acquire expertise without realizing quite what they know. (Other data show that this is not an efficient way to learn, however.)
PM–in this case, yes, I’m talking about conscious thinking. I’m not sure what you mean by “difficulty” in your second sentence.

By: pm

pm — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 15:17:48 +0000

When you refer to thinking do you only mean conscious thinking? I’m wondering if the difficulty is paying attention rather than thinking.

By: john thompson

john thompson — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 03:15:30 +0000

Lehrer used a case study of a British radar officer during the 1st Gulf War who became a hero for shooting down two Iraqi Sidewinder missiles seconds before they hit an American ship. They were following the flight path of American fighters and the officer couldn’t say why he feared they were missile. The British studied his decision inconclusively. Then the Marines reconstructed his info and sure enough he had practiced watching american planes for weeks. Nobody had realized it but the was a small deviation from previous patterns. So he WAS using memory without knowing it.

I hadn’t read your statement on nature as a strong endorsement. But I keep thinking that the more isolated we come from the material world, the worse this problem occurs of kids not picking up the concrete memories. Just speculating of course. By the way I enjoyed reading your AFT Educator article in print today as opposed to on a screen.

By: Diana Senechal

Diana Senechal — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 02:40:49 +0000

I am enjoying your book and laughing as I ponder! I believe I must be a bit of a contrarian, because whenever you hint that a problem might be boring or difficult, I tackle it right away. Thus I was puzzled by the code on p. 86; it seems the word “euman” follows “human.” What is “euman”?

Your arguments about stories and repetition make sense to me. I am also intrigued by the Einstein quote, “Imagination is more important than knowledge” (pp. 20, 35) and related quotes (p. 35). You show how they are wrong, and I ask myself: why do so many highly intelligent people downplay the value of knowledge at all? Why does it seem to them that schooling has little value next to imagination and creativity? Besides bad school experiences, what is going on here?

Well, there are some, just as bright, who will say that any great accomplishment is 99% hard work and 1% ability (or something like that). A statement along those lines has been attributed to Beethoven, I think. And in any case brilliant people get quoted in off-moments, and their statements should be taken with some spice.

Beyond that, I suspect that people often forget their indebtedness to knowledge. Suppose they make a discovery that casts into doubt what they were taught before. They conclude that what they were taught was bunk. But they forget that that very bunk made the discovery possible–that there could be no debunking without the bunk. (Not that knowledge is bunk–I mean that the very limits of schooling give us something to work with.)

Mark Twain (whom you also cite) is famous for his quote “I have never let my schooling interfere with my education.” But that doesn’t mean the schooling was worthless or that it had nothing to do with his education. In The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Huck, Tom, Jim, and others grapple constantly with what they learned in school, read in books, or heard others tell. Sometimes they dismiss it; sometimes they follow it to the letter; sometimes they mix it up; sometimes they argue with it; sometimes they find truth in it; sometimes they do several at once. Their lives and their thinking are all the more interesting as a result. Without the learning and the books, they would have no structures to contend with, no tales to contrast with their own, no paradoxes to resolve.

Diana Senechal