Education has been making the same mistake for 60 years, through the simple refusal to accept the best that cognitive science has to offer, in the form of cognitive load theory- a branch of cognitive science which has studied how the brain learns, and used these observations to design simple methods proven to help people learn quickly and effectively.
Simply put, working memory is puny. Working memory is the amount of information we can hold in our conscious mind at one time. Most people can handle a load of around seven items in our brain’s working memory at one time, although some, such as those with dyslexia, can only hold five items in their working memory at one time. My brother has dyslexia- despite having a high IQ, a bachelors in science and a masters in computing, he has had to learn to cope with this smaller working memory when learning.
So what conclusions does cognitive load theory ask us to draw from the observation that working memory is puny? Well first, it forces us to acknowledge that in order for us to accomplish any cognitively complex task, we need to have vast amounts of knowledge committed to long-term memory which we can draw forth like a summary file into our working memory when we are faced with a difficult question. We are rather like the absent-minded at the chalkboard, muttering to himself as he sifts through the knowledge in his brain, until he finally hits upon something relevant and writes it on the chalkboard.
The best examples of this come from Maths as a subject. A far larger percentage of the older population can work out 18 x 17 in their heads, simply because they instantly know 8 x 7 = 56 without having to think about it. For them, a focus on learning the multiplication tables by rote means they have all of the single digit times single digit results stored in their long term memory, readily available on demand. They don’t have to work it out, it’s just there. This creates a shortcut when dealing with a Maths problem which, in effect, reduces the complexity of the question by at least one space in working memory, because they are using long-term memory to ‘cheat’.
By comparison, only the relatively smart amongst the young are able to match the older generation at mental maths, for the simple reason that they didn’t spend anywhere near the same amount of time committing useful building blocks like multiplication tables to long-term memory. This is a tragedy, because whilst for the smart who endured such mind numbingly boring rote lessons during childhood this might seem like a blessing, for those who are less bright this type of rote learning is the only way to become functionally numerate. It is not by chance that rates of functional innumeracy have increased over time.
The same thing is true of literacy. For years, a debate raged over whether phonics, the method of teaching children to ‘sound out’ a word, or to use ‘whole word’ and examine a word in its broader sentence, was the better way to educate a child in reading. To be fair, it’s a little of both- because phonics will always rely upon the child having heard the word they are sounding out in their daily lives. But by default, the superior method is to teach a child to use phonics first, and whole word second- if they haven’t heard a particular word before. The exception comes with those who are dyslexic, like my brother, for whom the jumbling of letters means whole word is the only option.
Ironically, although whole word is preferred by most within the progressive, rather than the traditional, camp of teaching, it is one area which tends the exacerbate the natural advantages which are conferred upon those further up the socio-economic spectrum. If a school only teaches whole word, then those children who have parents who listen to them read at night will learn the phonic method from the home, as parents naturally drawn upon their own childhood to teach their children to sound out words. And the fact that more bedtime reading tends to occur in wealthier homes, with more educated parents, amplifies the disadvantages which the children of the working poor will face. Many a parent has faced the ire of a progressive teacher for teaching their child phonics at night, because many would really prefer it if everyone learned whole word exclusively.
So why the opposition to cognitive load theory, or the knowledge rich education an understanding of it demands? Well, for one thing it goes against the postmodern myth that there is no such thing as objective knowledge, to which many teachers subscribe, or indeed the delusional belief that language shapes reality. The evidence to the contrary is all around us, in the world we live in. We use it to turn a door handle, open curtains or pour a glass of water. And contrary to what some think, we don’t learn these things through ‘discovery’ but by watching, observing and imitating others.
There is also a tendency to make a false division between skills and knowledge, and then to dismiss knowledge as useless trivia. All skills are knowledge- it’s simply that most of the more practical ones are easier learned by observing, imitating and doing, rather than by explanation. A robot hand needs an incredibly complex set of instructions to open a door, but a human watching someone open a door for the first time and imitating it already has a vast store of embedded knowledge in their long-term memory upon which to draw in order to make the cognitive leap of opening a door seem easy.
We can even see this principle in action with the computer you are sitting in front of. You may possess the illusion that you learned most of what you know about your computer from playing around, and in a sense this is true, but in order to take those first tentative steps you needed a significant amount of embedded knowledge, or knowledge learned by example, in order to be able to play around and learn. The perceptual failing lies in an inability to recognise just how much we draw upon knowledge which is submerged below the conscious level.
You probably saw someone click on an icon, or the cross in the top right hand corner, before you ever tried it yourself. You similarly watched someone click left in the bottom left corner in order to access the pop-up menu, or use the drop down menus on the top bar. Plus, it’s designed to seem as though you can learn a lot through playing around. But if you wanted to take a still from a YouTube video and embed it in a document, then I would have to tell you to press alt + print screen within the paused YouTube video, and then press ctrl + v wherever you want to transfer it. Most of all, your reading knowledge is crucial throughout, and you will need to know that the PrtScr key probably means Print Screen.
But there is an even deeper opposition within teaching to the idea that knowledge is best passed from a teacher to a child, instead of discovered by the child. It is the erroneous belief that the adult world will somehow contaminate or corrupt the child. It’s an old idea, which goes back to Rousseau, “God makes all things good; man meddles with them and they become evil”. The modern paradigm might have discarded the notion of God, but the idea that we are born good and it is only our environment which corrupts our pure nature, has persisted. This makes a teacher passing knowledge onto a child an inherently risky proposition, because how would we know whether we were contaminating them?
It is also completely wrong as a theory. Many of things we previously believed we learned from our environment are born into us. A classic example is aggression. We now know that most babies are naturally aggressive, they are born with it. We are at our most aggressive between 18 months and three years old and it only the fact that our little limbs are incapable of causing much damage that prevents frequent and major physical trauma at this age, from others. What we learn from our environment and our teachers is self-control, the ability to restrain our aggressive impulses. It’s a lesson which most learn better than a small percentage of the population (5%), mostly boys, who have difficulty learning to inhibit their natural aggression. This graph shows how physical aggression declines in children over time.
So in short, we need to focus on imparting as much information into children’s brains as possible at an early age. For many of the most basic building blocks of knowledge such as multiplication tables or phonics are vital to a whole range of more advanced knowledge and reasoning, this can and should include rote learning- to insure that the knowledge is as deeply embedded in long-term memory as possible. To not do so effectively handicaps the poorest children from the outset. But this doesn’t mean that learning needs to stay this way forever.
Let’s consider the two models with a practical example. Consider the approach which seeks to keep the child pure, to discover knowledge for themselves. If you wanted to learn for themselves about printing you could design an Art lesson which allows them to use potato printing to learn how to cut words or images into potatoes and then use a paint tray to print onto paper. If you’re lucky you might have a typewriter, which could help them learn for themselves how printing evolved over time.
But with a little more time spent on knowledge and a little less spent on playing around and ‘discovering’ knowledge for themselves, you could open their minds to one of the most significant events in human history, the invention of the printing press, and a whole world of knowledge besides. You could tell them how the massive increase in literacy around the world, taught us to be more empathetic to others by imagining ourselves as fictional characters, or how this allowed people to make the empathic leap to realise that slavery is wrong, children should not be labourers or that women deserved the vote.
You could prove it by giving them the ‘mind in the eye’ test, which shows that people who read more are better able to judge the emotions of a person from a tiny portion of the face centred on the eyes. And the funny thing is that providing kids with any solid and tangible piece of knowledge and they will always have more questions and be more curious than children who have been left to ‘discover’ knowledge for themselves.
For too long educational academics have been left to pursue theories which have no evidentiary basis in fact, whilst the knowledge of how we actually learn has been sitting in a book on Cognitive Science on a shelf, gathering dust. In many ways the educational theorist is like a novice cook throwing their ingredients into a pan and hoping for the best that every turns out nice, when they have a book by a world leading professional chef willing to lead them through every meticulous step in producing fantastic food. We need to throw away postmodernism in education, and the misguided and disproven theories of Rousseau, and replace them both with the practical and proven knowledge of how we learn. Cognitive science is the torch which illuminates the best path forward, we have merely to step onto it.
Great source. I read an article a while back about a journalist who covered a memory competition in New York. They obviously used mnemonic techniques, including the memory place. A year later the writer went back and competed in the contest, and ultimately won. It might have been on Medium. There are also certain types of task which can be completed as a prequel to engaging in more difficult tests. This was from one of the BBC's science-based shows before they went woke...
The split between education and cognitive science mirrors the split between practice and research in psychology.The results of both have been catastrophic– and due to the institutionalized nature of the schisms, likely to continue
Interestingly, I just followed an online course on quantum computing basics which is also an experiment in getting the course information into long term memory. It works like this: you take the course and after that tacitly answer a set of questions. You yourself have to for each question indicate whether you remembered correctly or not. Based on that some of the questions are repeated. After a couple of days you get a personalized email with its own set of questions which are processed the same way. This gets repeated with ever increasing intervals. First impression is that this works wonderfully well. I recount the same feeling I had when taking a speed reading course: at the start it feels like something magical, too good to be true. Until you actually manage to do within a timeframe of just a few weeks something you thought impossible beforehand.
Maybe that has something to do with the slow/non adoptation of these things: it is so far outside the experience of most people and I guess most policy makers that it can’t be imagined that it may actually work. You have to try it to believe it, and as in my case, sit somewhat stunned by disbelieve afterwards that it *actually does* work.
Very good to see your writings here Geary, anytime I read your writings in Quillette I wondered why you didn't do articles of your own, but of course you had, and I thank you. Tim
Great source. I read an article a while back about a journalist who covered a memory competition in New York. They obviously used mnemonic techniques, including the memory place. A year later the writer went back and competed in the contest, and ultimately won. It might have been on Medium. There are also certain types of task which can be completed as a prequel to engaging in more difficult tests. This was from one of the BBC's science-based shows before they went woke...
Cheers, most kind!
The split between education and cognitive science mirrors the split between practice and research in psychology.The results of both have been catastrophic– and due to the institutionalized nature of the schisms, likely to continue
The name of the website/organization supplying the course is quantum.country
Hi Geary, I second Tim Harris.
Interestingly, I just followed an online course on quantum computing basics which is also an experiment in getting the course information into long term memory. It works like this: you take the course and after that tacitly answer a set of questions. You yourself have to for each question indicate whether you remembered correctly or not. Based on that some of the questions are repeated. After a couple of days you get a personalized email with its own set of questions which are processed the same way. This gets repeated with ever increasing intervals. First impression is that this works wonderfully well. I recount the same feeling I had when taking a speed reading course: at the start it feels like something magical, too good to be true. Until you actually manage to do within a timeframe of just a few weeks something you thought impossible beforehand.
Maybe that has something to do with the slow/non adoptation of these things: it is so far outside the experience of most people and I guess most policy makers that it can’t be imagined that it may actually work. You have to try it to believe it, and as in my case, sit somewhat stunned by disbelieve afterwards that it *actually does* work.
Very good to see your writings here Geary, anytime I read your writings in Quillette I wondered why you didn't do articles of your own, but of course you had, and I thank you. Tim