Why Don't Students Like School?

This is a very suggestive book which chiefly deals with pedagogy. It focuses upon nine aspects of the learning process and offers corollaries for the instructor to consider. For example, one of the principles is that children are more alike than different in terms of learning. The corollary: knowledge of students' learning styles should not preoccupy the teacher. Most important classroom implication: focus on lesson content, not student differences, when you are deciding how to teach. The book is more than that, however. It offers a basic model of the workings of the human mind, based on up-to-date cognitive science. The presentation is straightforward and lucid. Willingham sketches a basic outline with three boxes--the environment (which impinges on consciousness), operational memory which conjures with the environment and draws on (the third box) long-term memory. Operational memory is limited. While the brain's awareness of its surroundings is very impressive (hence, robots cannot drive trucks) it is lazy and does not like abstract thought. It relies on memory, goes to memory first when it faces a problem and tries to short-circuit the ratiocinative process by finding prior examples, prior models, prior methods. The operational memory likes to `chunk', to see collocations of material rather than individual items. It searches for patterns and likes mnemonic devices. Bottom line: the more you know the more easy it is to learn. This bears directly on E. D. Hirsch's (Willingham's Virginia colleague) notions of cultural literacy. What do we need to teach? What do we need to know? Whatever writers leave out, i.e., whatever they take for granted, whatever they assume that an intelligent, aware reader should already know. (For technical, professional learning, we should teach key concepts, issues and problems, the lore that professionals in a field can be expected to already know.) Willingham explores such traditional issues as nature/nurture, grill/drill Gradgrindism and, fundamentally, what works. He demonstrates why children need to know facts, why they like facts and how facts enable them to understand and analyze. He considers `degree of difficulty' (in the classroom and beyond), arguing that the brain likes puzzles and challenges, but not ones that are too easy or too difficult. This is a fascinating book, particularly in its exploration of the importance of memory (I think I understand Plato and Wordsworth much better as a result) and the nature of puzzles (I think I understand the attractiveness of genre fiction to a greater degree now). While it is basically a book of pedagogy it is much, much more than that. Highly recommended.

An engaging, accessible, judicious, evidence-based book which distills nine of the most widely supported findings from cognitive science that are likely to deliver the greatest positive impact in the classroom and beyond. The book would be a solid, four-staff effort in any field. It earns its fifth star because of its distinctive value and positioning among works on improving teaching. There are books for teachers on teaching that display and can generate more passion, but none of them are better-disciplined by the evidence. There are books with more evidence and nuance (including Willingham's other work), but none are more accessible to non-specialists. There are better introductions to cognitive science, but none aimed more squarely at teaching and teachers. Finally, it is content-rich compared to almost everything in the field: a total of nine significantly different but complementary ideas is about eight more than one finds in most books on improving teaching, especially those that are equally accessible. I first read this book in preparation for a multi-year professional development project in a technical college in an emerging economy. It became immediately the "go-to" resource for that effort at changing teachers' ways of thinking about themselves and their work. I'm not sure where the few negative reviews come from: I've never recommended the book to a teacher or anyone else who hasn't found it enjoyable and valuable. Perhaps it is because, while the book offers concrete suggestions for converting its insights into practice, it doesn't give the reader cookie-cutter instructions, You still need to reflect seriously about what you're trying to accomplish and how to harness what you've learned, though Willingham does provide enough help to enable even a novice teacher to get going. (And it's a great choice as a text/conversation-starter for group-based professional development activities, in my experience.) To me, the balance of respect and support for the reader/teacher is one of the book's major strengths.

In his time of getting an undergrad at my RDU area neighbor Duke University, a PhD at my not affiliated whatsoever (but much superior to my undergrad and grad schools) far to the north neighbor Harvard University, and a teaching position at the University of Virginia, author Daniel T. Willingham has put together a healthy collection of cognitive psychology books based on education. Being a fan of both the worlds of education and brain science (maybe to solve the mystery of what happened to all that information I put in during decades of education), I thought it was a good idea when the professional development class I took over this summer required us to read Willingham's book Why Don't Students Like School? I realize the question that title poses seems strangely enough both convoluted and pretty obvious. But it turns out... it's just convoluted. Why Don't Students Like School? gives some great insight for teachers; insight that often seems completely unintuitive until you read through the research based explanations Willingham gives. This title is a little misleading, though, without the very sub-subtitle (one that looks more like credits than a title) A Cognitive Scientist Answers Questions about how the Mind Works and What it Means for the Classroom. It's packed with information that can't be piled into one representative main topic (besides maybe just... education), but one of the most talked about topics was that, regardless of what most education books of the day will tell you, there are two tools of pedagogy that work better than anything else to build competent students with the best ability to take in and truly understand new knowledge: factual learning and practice... (i.e. memorizing dates in history, formulas in math, and practicing until and after we've got it all down). Huh? Isn't that exactly what we've been doing for time immemorial and are now leaving? Yes. What about teaching test taking strategies and research strategies so students can do well on state-mandated tests? Sad answer to this is, it might help them a little on these tests, but it hurts them in their memorization and application skills later in life... It's like cramming; it does work if all you're looking for that information to do is give you a passing grade on a test. Willingham and others' research has said that in order to build analysis skills that will last (which is virtually all students learn in school today... at least the temporary kind) they need the background information that we are presently too busy to teach them. The education debate between teaching more subject content or more learning strategies has already been won - by learning strategies (it even has a more politically correct name), but this research is saying, wait, we're teaching them so they can have better lives, right? Not just so our school system can have more 4/4's on the End of Grade Test than the next... I'm not going to say the whole book was great, cover to cover. Probably a third of it was a really good read and the rest was stuff many of us (certainly teachers) have heard or read in school (college and job) many times. By the way, while it's a comparatively small topic in the book, he does give a reason for the main title being what it is. Our brains don't like to learn. We spend a third of our brains' energy consumption on vision alone, and they do whatever they can to stop from using more for thought. They do so by supplementing a lot of that thought with memory, hence the reason why we need to get information into memory. Then, we can use our full amount of working-memory (or thinking) to figure out what we don't know. I think this came out as less of a review of Willingham's book and more of a pedagogical rant backed up by his research. Either way, I enjoyed it.

I get tired of hearing the phrase, "Brain research shows..." to prove whatever point teachers are trying to show at the time. Whether it is about the importance of play, the use of movies, standing on your head before a test, or studying on the toilet, educators pull these three words and throw them down on the table like the trump card they've been saving to illuminate a point. The problem is that most teachers, including me, have no idea about brain research or even where to begin. Because of this, I sought to find a book to offer a basic understanding for dum-dums like me. The subtitle of this book is, "A cognitive scientist answers questions about how the mind works and what it means for your classroom." This is a better explanation for the information, as I still don't know why students don't like school (perhaps it has something to do with me!). I suppose I could sum up the book as follows: 1. People are naturally curious. 2. Teachers create "problems" far too easy or too difficult. 3. Students do not have background information necessary to engage a problem, thus making it easy to quit. 4. Teachers present information in a disconnected way, thus students cannot remember background information to address critical thinking problems. 5. Students sit and force themselves to hold back both sleep and drool, while dreaming about that cute girl sitting in the front. 6. Students are no longer curious. As I read, I made liberal notes throughout, and it will be a book to revisit. If you are a teacher, I think that you'll find this to be an important work for your professional growth. At face value, here are the three main points that I have thought most about since completing this: 1. As I already listed, people are naturally curious. I like this idea, and I must remember it as I teach. Am I creating problems that challenge students to think and wrestle with in class, problems that are still within their reach for success? Reducing the amount of other work to focus on more of this kind of work is something that I want to do. This includes offering more opportunities for students to play with language and words. Sometimes, I forget about this as I try to meet content standards. 2. Memorization is important, as it provides the building blocks for critical thinking. The author is not suggesting long lists of information to remember. However, in order for our brains to conquer a problem, basic materials are needed. This could be definitions, word parts, poetry, multiplication tables, etc. Modern teaching often belittles memorizing as outdated pedagogy, but when students do not know the times tables or what the definition of an allusion is, the critical thinking engagement is crippled. 3. The effectiveness of "multiple intelligences" is over-emphasized in education. According to Wellingham, educators put too much stock in this, as there does not seem to be different intelligences, rather strengths and talents. We do students a disservice when we tell them that they are smart in some area, even if they are not the same. His suggestion is that we focus on varying the lessons (sometimes visual, using music, acting, etc.) rather than on each student. This is the area that teachers will squirm and protest the most. Multiple intelligences are the sacred cows of education. If you don't believe me, as a teacher you know about them. Their eyes will light up as they tell you about how they had students act out what a commas does or sing about a Picasso painting. Why Don't Students Like School? is the perfect primer for educators to get a peek into the complex and deep world of brain research. I still won't use "brain research shows..." in my next conversation, but I found this book a good first step in understanding how it relates to education.

This book is a easy to read explanation of some of the main obstacles that students face when trying to learn new material and what teachers can do to help them overcome them. Willingham is cognitive psychologist that has been working in the education field for a long time and he is very familiar with a lot of what passes for research in this field and the many fads that have come and gone in education that promised to improve student performance. His book is not one of those types. As a matter of fact much of his book my seem a little dry and common sense but what it is psychological principles that have been proven to work not in education but in life in general. Things such as practice and repetition being the best way to learn something that you would never hear in some of the other "research based" educational books. I have to say that I was also a little surprised in that I was expecting this book to be a refutation of a lot of the stuff that I had learned in my other educational classes. But what I actually found was that it was actually suggesting some of the same things but in a much clearer and less convoluted way. That seems to be the problem with a lot of educational literature the authors seem very self conscious about what they are saying and feel the need to use a bunch of confusing jargon and site all these studies to prove that what they are saying is relevant. That is not the case at all with this book and the result is something that is actually readable that doesn't require to buy some new educational product or start calling something that you have been doing for a long time by a different name. I highly recommend this book.

I like this book and it is quite thought provoking for me. I understand not all agree with the ideas presented here, but I think it is more than safe to say may "do" like what is being presented. I would imagine that even the critics of the book, writing reviews here, are keen to learn and were keen through their life - hence the criticism. I love to think. I know many people who do indeed love to think. Thinking is very rewarding for thinkers. Thinking about the joys of thinking may only yield one conclusion: that thinking is enjoyable. This would be a conclusion that thinkers may make. I am a Canadian. I have been traveling and teaching internationally for the best part of two decades now. I see, in various cultures, that thinking is a cultural "thing". In the Middle East, where I currently teach, students have not been equipped to think as we have in the west, in general. Yes, a lot of knowledge does exist here. There are very clever Middle East residents. Many lack the drive to think. I have never seen a student, at the college where I teach, carry a book (for personal interest) in my six years here. They say, quite clearly, that they don't like to think. Not all. Many. I had the chance to teach in Tanzania as well. Similar story BUT without the wealth there was more drive to seek education as it was a ticket to a good life. People needed to work hard to rise there. In Japan, where I also taught, most students would carry a book and loved to discuss and contemplate various issues and cultures within the world. I think that the introduction is not where this books stops. It goes beyond stating that people don't like to think, it goes way beyond this first page which may have been (may be) what sets people off the book here in reviews - but the book is a brilliant one. It acknowledges that perhaps naturally without modern 21st century Maslow needs meeting most in the west, we may not be as inclined to think. The book ends with advice on how educators can help students like learning, and thinking, more. I see no harm in that, at all. I have worked with a lot of very unmotivated students, ones that had not done well in K-12 and are in college as in the Middle East this is what happens regardless of K-12 performance (in many cases) and the ideas in this book are immediately useful. Its a darn good book. Not pseudoscience at all. It's stuff to think about. That's it.

Willingham has written a very clear account of his perspective from cognitive science, as well as some of his views and suggestions. Given that the overall reasons why students do not like school are somewhat intractable, the question becomes, for us as teachers and parents, what can we understand about this, and how can our work improve student understanding and progress through school? He supplies a very well-organized book for the intended audience: Focused and systematic, and yet, at the same time, appealing to us via anecdotes and literary devices (such as typical types of puzzles that many people can relate to) to avoid making his discussion too dry and authoritative. I have encountered much of what he discussed in previous reading, but the book has clear and helpful suggestions, extremely well-organized, and is a quick read, so I did not find the review to be boring or unhelpful. I feel this is a worthwhile book for the intended audience, despite skirting the edge of a pedestrian presentation. He is also careful to support his views with references to scientific work, including articles and books of possible interest.

I am a teacher. A colleague recommended this book and started a book club for us to discuss it. Our district admins have long been 'believers' of 'brain science' but much of what they purport can't be supported by data or it has since been shown to be one person's bright idea that isn't accurate. Yet they still push it on us to drive our lesson planning (most of these people have little or no experience as classroom teachers). They seem to have some Hollywood-ized version of what a classroom should be. My hope is that they would reconsider their approach if they had a better understanding of 'real' brain science. First, I have to say the title is misleading. At no point does the author ever explain why students don't like school. He leaves it up to the reader to extrapolate that from the information given. Ultimately, it doesn't really matter why they don't like school since that doesn't seem to be the goal of the book anyway. The goal seems to be to give teachers an understanding of how we learn, some insight into our motivations behind learning and the limitations to learning something new in hopes that, when designing lessons and activities, we can address these issues. This book explains how our brains learn and why in language that's easy to understand even for those without a science background. The author only includes information that can be supported by LOTS of data (as a scientist, this is important to me). He gives many examples to illustrate his points. It saves a lot of time to have an expert in the field separate the good from the rest. He also makes recommendations for further reading on topics that he divides into 'technical' and 'less technical' with a few notes on what the paper/article is about. Those of us who spend day after day in the classroom actually do know something about our profession. (We do seem to have the one profession where everyone seems to feel that since they spent time in school, they must understand all aspects of our jobs and be able to weigh in on how we should be doing them.) We know that some of the things others want us to do in the classroom are unrealistic. Students are unable to 'think like.....' (insert profession here). People in professions have spent years in school learning background knowledge (which students don't have) and years of experience working with and integrating that knowledge. To expect students to just be able to leap-frog over all of that hard work if only the classroom teachers could design FUN lessons that 'trick' them into learning is just unrealistic. That's not to say that we don't have lessons where students play games, watch movies or engage in other activities that help them to remember background knowledge and integrate it by extrapolating what we've been doing in class to other problems. But it's not an instantaneous process - it takes a lot of practice and yes, some rote memory. The best days for us are when (usually weeks into a topic/unit) students are able to apply what we've been working on/with to new problems, remember how this might apply to previous topics or ask questions that show they're using the information they learned in class to apply it to new ideas. Asking students to learn a new topic through 'project-based learning' is leaving them to flail around without the proper tools and does not mimic work life for professionals in any field. I know I'm going to anger some people here and get responses that they successfully run project-based learning programs. I say good for them but I maintain that this is not appropriate for all students. I recommend this book to anyone (educator or not) who would like to better understand how human beings learn.

Los nueve principios que discute Daniel son claves para mejorar y basar mi práctica docente en un mejor conocimiento de lo que pasa en el cerebro cuando uno aprende.

Easy read !! Good research and alot of further reading mentioned.

I delayed reading this book for some time. I didn’t like the title (my students love school, don’t they?), and experiences with modestly qualified presenters peddling “brain-based learning” make me suspicious of those claiming to apply “brain research” to teaching. I need not have worried. The title is a hook to raise curiosity (much closer to the content - but less provocative - would be “Why don’t students learn as much at school as they could?”). And Willingham writes with knowledge and wisdom, backing his points with evidence. Soon after starting the book I realized that underlining key passages would not work. The book is packed with interesting insights, too many to underline. He presents his ideas in a lively style as answers to questions, modelling the cognitive principles he advocates. The result is a very enjoyable read. But how will it influence my teaching? Here, briefly, is what could result from implementing the cognitive principles Willingham identifies: “Curriculum content - geologic history, moon phases, cellular respiration etc. - is presented as answers to questions, solutions to problems. There is extensive use of storytelling both through stories of real individuals (scientists in my case) and through making stories around natural phenomena. There is a recognition of the importance of practice to enable learners to have key knowledge and skills in their long term memory. Students are not expected to have expertise in tasks such as carrying out full investigations to create new knowledge. The role of the students is that of novice developing appropriate skills and, over time, deep understandings. The teacher is careful to evaluate lessons by considering what it is that the students will think about during the lesson. Importantly, the teacher believes that intelligence can be developed through effort and practice, and is careful not to praise students for their ability - that would risk students seeing their intelligence as fixed and leave them threatened by their errors. The teacher sees his own expertise as something that can develop through practice and so consciously reflects on successes and failures through keeping a teaching diary.” Not all reviewers have been as positive as myself. Perhaps some of Willingham’s ideas (e.g. the brain is not designed for thinking) are too provocative, and certainly he explores, and finds wanting, some cherished ideas (such as learning styles and multiple intelligences). But don’t let some negative reviews dissuade you. “Why don’t students like school?” is recommended without reservation.

I loved it! If you are a teacher, you should read it. If you aren't, you should read it, too.

After reading this book one understands how to study and how to learn. One understands how to transfer knowledge to students. Background knowledge is vital for interpretation of what one learns and understanding concepts depends on understand logical processes that are the methods for unravelling complex mathematics. Learning is a life time mission because insight and understanding develop over time. It is a book for teachers and students alike.