Why Students Don't Like School
“Why Students Don’t Like School” by Daniel T. Willingham is the best professional development book on teaching I have ever read, by a very wide margin. Do not let the title fool you - it is mostly show. This is not a book about clever tricks and nonsense to get kids engaged for individual lessons, nor is it a book beating on the same old drum of why rote learning and fact-memorization is killing student motivation. Rather, “Why Students Don’t Like School” is an up-to-date review of the literature of educational psychology by an eminent professional in the field. It outlines 9 cognitive principles of teaching that have been elucidated by modern psychology that can (and should) be embraced by all teachers and parents.
I will cover each of these 9 principles in greater depth in future articles, but I will list them here with very brief summaries, and finish by offering an explanation for the title of the book.
1st principle - People are naturally curious, but they are not naturally good thinkers.
This principle revolves around two facts. The first fact is that we are evolved to learn new things and get positive natural feedback (endorphins, dopamine) from solving small, low-risk problems. Second is the fact that we have a working memory that is critical to conscious thinking, and has limited storage. We do best when we are on auto-pilot, using our long-term memory, rather than our working memory.
2nd principle - Factual knowledge precedes skill. Willingham shows that the pastime of bashing “fact-learning” is a bogus, self-gratifying platitude. Large bodies of factual knowledge held in long-term memory, are a precedent to higher level forms of thought such as comprehension, creativity, synthesis, and revision. This doesn’t mean that we need to drum facts into kids’ heads’ with recitation drills all day long. But it does mean that we cannot expect to observe higher order thinking skills until students have acquired the relevant background knowledge.
3rd principle - Memory is the residue of thought. This principle is rooted in some extremely fascinating experiments with counter-intuitive findings. Wanting to remember something has little to no effect on actually remembering that thing. The illusion is created by ruminating on the topic over and over throughout a day. It isn’t the wanting that creates the memory, it is the ruminating over and over that creates the memory. The classroom implications are very profound here. Teaching is less about clever ways of attention-grabbing, and more about understanding what will be going through your students’ heads during a lesson. Willingham offers up the perfect anecdotal example in which a teacher has their students bake biscuits to help understand what life was like on the Underground Railroad. Clever as it may be, this lesson is totally ineffective because students spend most of their time thinking about how to weigh flour and mix ingredients.
4th principle - We understand new things in the context of things we already know. It isn’t a breakthrough to know that a teacher who is capable of spinning up a good analogy has a powerful tool in her arsenal. The realization here is that new knowledge often starts in a shallow and analogous state - and that is ok. Getting a rudimentary grasp on a new concept may require some trite comparisons that break down at a deeper level, but deep knowledge will come with time and practice.
5th principle - Proficiency requires practice. As if we didn’t know this in the world of music education. Repetitive practice is not the most enjoyable thing on earth but it is an unavoidable necessity to proficiency. Diligently scheduling practice on a consistent basis over a period of time is highly preferable to cramming it in all at once. Long term retention is better and boredom and frustration are mitigated. We need to zoom out, and change our expectations for the results of practice to a longer term.
6th principle - Cognition is fundamentally different early and late in training. This is not about general maturity but about taking for granted what background knowledge our students possess. Developmental psychology plays a big role here, but the real problem being revealed is that teachers are trying too hard to get their students to think like experts. They can’t do that - they aren’t experts. They can only really think at the level they are currently on. Then one level more, progressively, until expertise is finally attained. This is a life-long process, not something you instill on a Tuesday in April. Trying to get our students to “think like scientists” is a fool’s errand.
7th principle - Children are more alike than different in terms of learning. Learning styles are lionized when they out to be mythologized. Whatever model is being proposed, from visual- auditory-kinesthetic, to seven-pointed learning style models, and 9-types-of-intelligence models, they simply do not hold up to scrutiny. This isn’t to say that students do not learn in different ways - they most certainly do. But there is no working model that has actually survived proper scientific scrutiny that has typecast 3 or 9 modalities of learning into which all students fit. The differences between individuals are too large and bizarre, and will need to be spotted by teachers on an individual basis. Now, this doesn’t mean that the teacher has to differentiate every lesson for every child either. Some subject matter really only translates through one medium - music must be heard. Trying to change it’s auditory components into visual ones is not worth the effort. Some students will get it better than others. This isn’t weird - just help the ones having trouble. For the most part, if students are struggling to process, it is because they are missing some relevant background knowledge.
8th principle - Intelligence can be changed through sustained hard work. Genetics play an enormous role in intelligence - up to 50% of our IQ. But this effect can be easily overstated by environmental feedback loops when students are typecast as “gifted” or “remedial.” Most students struggle because they lack relevant background knowledge. Students who lack relevant background knowledge struggle to grasp a lesson and therefore fail to develop the new background knowledge offered in this lesson. This effect compounds over time and causes an ever-widening gap between remedial and gifted students. Catching up remedial students is not really about finding the right motivator or the right learning style. It is about filling in the gaps of missing relevant background knowledge through hard work and practice.
9th principle - Teaching, like any complex cognitive skill, must be practiced to be improved. This one pretty much speaks for itself. Teachers need to turn all these principles inward to improve at their craft.
Willingham’s writing in “Why Students Don’t Like School” is as entertaining as it is informative. I will dive into each of the 9 cognitive principles from the book in subsequent blog articles, with some feedback from my own teaching experience that can be applied by parents as well as teachers. I would love to have discussions with you about its contents and about my commentary on it!
I’d like to conclude with a brief explanation for the title of the book. Genuinely interested people find it off-putting and garish because it looks like a clickbait title selling a silver bullet. Please let me reassure you that it is what it is to satiate a publisher that wants to sell books. The book is mostly about what efficient learning, and therefore good teaching looks like. But there is a genuine explanation in the book for ‘why students don’t like school.’ Students don’t like school mostly because of principle #1 - we are naturally curious but we are not naturally good thinkers. This is to say that we are easily discouraged when thinking becomes difficult. And all the other cognitive principles conspire to make thinking difficult, discouraging students and causing boredom. The implications for our teaching and parenting are profound. We’ll dive into it in more detail in a series of articles that address each cognitive principle in turn - please join me for the ride!
