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Why Don't Students Like School?: A Cognitive Scientist Answers Questions About How The Mind Works And What It Means For The Classroom (2009)

by Daniel T. Willingham(Favorite Author)

3.95 of 5 Votes: 1

ISBN

0470279303 (ISBN13: 9780470279304)

languge

English

genre

Nonfiction

publisher

Jossey-Bass

review 1: If you’re a teacher, read this. If you’re a parent of kids in school age, read this. And if you nurture any interest about improving your cognitive skills, read this also.After having read “Outliers: The Story of Success” (2008), “Talent Is Overrated: What Really Separates World-Class Performers from Everybody Else” (2008) and “The Talent Code: Genius Isn’t Born. It’s Grown. Here’s How.” (2009), “Why Don't Students Like School?” (2009) was the missing key. Most of the books on talent and experts are too centred upon experience, experts achievement throughout hard training and learning by doing. Daniel T. Willingham demonstrates how this is also relevant for the cognitive skills, and how it’s built in school.The central argument of this book is s... moreimple, and I’ve been defending this in the past about the development of creativity, but as you’ll read here, this is the basis for every cognitive ability:“You cannot develop 'thinking skills' in the absence of facts. We encourage students to think critically, not just memorize facts. However thinking skills depend on factual knowledge for their operation.”This is a 5 stars book, that every teacher should read, and any interested parent also. I’m just sad about the title chosen, which will put this book away for many, and is not being able to translate all the brilliant knowledge inside.
review 2: Daniel Willingham concludes Why Don't Students Like School? A Cognitive Scientist Answers Questions About How the Mind Works and What It Means for the Classroom by likening teaching to writing. He recollects a piece of advice from a creative writing teacher he had in college that most readers would rather watch television or grab a beer than read a book. His professor's point was to make your writing strong enough to constrain the impulse, to persuade your reader that what you have to say is better then either of those options. Willingham contends that teaching is a persuasive act too.I have long said the same thing, but that's not what Willingham spends most of his time on in his book. Too bad. Nor does he answer his chief question: Why don't kids like school? Instead he takes up nine different cognitive principles like "People are naturally curious but not naturally good thinkers." He sets what he sees as required knowledge about your students for each of these principles like "What is just beyond what my students know and can do?" and then provides classroom implications for these principles. In the case of this first one, "Think of to-be-learned material as answers and take the time necessary to explain the questions to students."His principles are useful and the studies he draws on are compelling though I have seen many of them before. I was especially glad that in addition to subscribing to Duckworth's concept of grit that he includes a chapter on teachers as learners too. I did take exception with his premise that students shouldn't try to approximate the work of mathematicians, scientists, and the like as they are not ready to do this kind of work. While I agree that these experts have background knowledge years in the making, allowing them to easily see patterns and to pay attention to significant detail, it is a mistake to divorce our teaching from the real world. Our students need to adopt the habits of minds of readers, writers, etc. if they are ever to acquire the deep knowledge experts possess. Otherwise, what we ask of them will remain "schoolish" not "toolish" to use Wilhelm and Smith's terminology.Some of the problems he chose to include to illustrate his principles sometimes eluded me, but I also read the book in fits and starts around school projects, so that might have impeded my processing. Despite the drawbacks I noted above, I do think this would be a good book for a whole faculty to discuss in book study. It would certainly provide fodder for good conversation about the art and science behind our work. less

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