We learn what we think about.

Learning is the same thing as thinking (about something) and then remembering (it).

Learning = Thinking + Remembering

The remembering part happens automatically if we spend enough energy on the thinking part. That is, if we think deeply about something—and often this includes plenty of time—then we will remember it and, therefore, will have learned it.

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Psychology, Neuroscience, and Education come together in the form of constructivism, a theory of learning that suggests individuals make their own meaning about the world around them. If this seems obvious, it’s not. During much of the last century, these disciplines relied on Behaviorism as a paradigm to describe learning. Remember Skinner’s “learned response”? Learning, back then, had nothing to do with inner cognitive structures (those mental models we create when we think about ideas big and small, that self talk that embodies thinking). It had only to do with measuring which behaviors resulted from which external stimuli.

Teachers know by now that learning is active. You’ve heard this, right? That’s why we’re called facilitators and coaches and other fancy nouns.[1] I’m kind of turned off by trendy pc talk, but these words are apt, because it’s the kids, not the teachers, who are doing the mental work that produces cognitive change. We now know that teachers[2] cannot simply transfer a body of knowledge into a learner’s brain. We can try, of course. But it won’t result in learning. Quick: What’s the capital of Oregon? If you live near there you might know. But if you, like me, grew up in Buffalo, N.Y., then you probably don’t know the answer[3], even though you undoubtedly were taught this. You also supposedly learned a lot of facts about historical events and grammar and chemistry. Which ones you know right now—that is, which ones you actually learned—has everything to do with which ones you thought about at the time. If you didn’t think about it then and you know it now, then you thought about it some time between then and now.

Back to this: We learn what we think about.

So what exactly does that think entail? All the active verbs relating to cognition that you can throw at me! Summarize, classify, analyze, distinguish, reflect upon, integrate, deduce, synthesize, evaluate, compare, imagine, generalize, etcetera.

Sometimes teachers mistakenly believe that the statement “Learning is active” means that students must be moving. They believe that putting a multiple choice question on the SMART board and having a kid walk up and point to the answer is a demonstration of constructivism in action. It’s not. That kid could be a boy who just two minutes ago heard the teacher tell him that Salem is the capital of Oregon, so he is now pointing to Answer C, Salem. He has not learned this fact any better than I did 25[4] years ago.

The activity implicit in the expression active learning comes from those energetic thinking words. The real action is on the inside![5]

Or a teacher will hear that group interaction promotes the kind of thinking that results in learning, so she will divide the kids into groups and give them questions to answer at the back of Chapter 15 in their Social Studies book. Depending on the questions, and most of them are simply asking for information that can be found word-by-word in Chapter 15, the kids will probably just race to find the pages that have the answers and copy them down. Things like “Federalism is a system of government in which power is shared between the central (or federal) government and the states.”[6] The fact that they are working in groups has no bearing on how much or whether they think about federalism.

Here’s where group interaction can play a role in the construction of knowledge: Maybe those questions are broad in scope and involve some synthesis of what they’ve read. Maybe the group is required to offer a collective response after they come to some agreement on it, and maybe their answer is to be put to the class verbally, when an even larger discussion takes place. Maybe the questions are along the lines of “Talk about the arguments in the 18^th Century between federalists and anti-federalists and decide if any of those arguments are still alive today.” Whew! Or this one: “People say that the brand new Americans offered George Washington the crown and he turned it down. What does this mean? Is this true? If true, what are the implications of the offer and the rejection?” Ain’t no way anyone is gonna get out of that question alive without actually thinking. And if kids end up arguing about whether the Civil War was about slavery or states’ rights, that’s a good thing. That means they’re thinking.

Because thinking’s the thing. Construction of knowledge is work. There’s usually conflict involved, because we have to replace our old conception of something with a new, revised one. Unfamiliar information can wreck the beautiful picture we have of an idea. We can get all caught up in the elegance of Thomas Jefferson, in his lofty rhetoric and exquisite architectural designs and excellent diplomacy skills, but that picture falls apart just a little bit when we hear that he owned slaves. But then we read his own words to John Adams and feel a little better about him when he explains that criminalizing slavery would have prevented the South from agreeing to sign the Constitution in the first place. His prediction of a future war over this slavery question and his justification for putting it off until a day when our democracy was less fragile make us think he was prescient and pragmatic. But then we remember that he personally held slaves and freed them only upon his death, and we go back to thinking he’s kind of a jerk. Finally, we can’t take it anymore, so we collect up all this conflicting information and stuff it into the Thomas Jefferson file in our brain, and now we have learned about Thomas Jefferson. We can talk about him later on, and we do it in a way that’s fluid and complicated and even uncertain when it comes to value judgments, but we are knowledgeable. And down the road we might discover yet a different fact about Thomas Jefferson, such as that he collected several bibles, used scissors to remove references to miracles and the divinity of Jesus, and combined the remaining parts to create his own “Jefferson Bible.” And so we drag out that old file, we assess our prior knowledge about his proclamations of Christianity, we wonder about and investigate the order in which his statements and actions regarding Christianity took place, and we conclude that he changed his mind over the years about religion.[7] Perhaps we start questioning the notion that America was founded as a Christian nation, and we wonder some more. Maybe we look for other Founding Fathers’ statements from later in their lives, or maybe we are fatigued and confused by Thomas Jefferson, so we put the expanded and newly organized file away again, perturbed by the messiness of our knowledge. Even as everything becomes muddier in our minds, we are in fact learning more.

We might spend years hearing about the wrongness of sentence fragments, and we might practice diligently making our sentences squarely parallel, and then we see in the world around us professional writers and, gasp, teachers using sentence fragments “for effect”! And we find out somewhere along the line that occasionally we have to sacrifice parallel structure for accuracy! And then we find out that there never was a rule precluding us from starting sentences with “and” and “but,” that those conjunctions are fine introductory elements as long as the sentence is complete! What?

If we’re thinking about it, if we’re arguing with others or ourselves about it, if we’re playing around with our old knowledge of it, then we are learning it. For real.

Back to this: We learn what we think about.

What’s in that what? It can be anything, of course, but during the school day it’s supposed to be the curriculum, all the stuff that society decided a kid should know.[8] This is where teachers come in. They’ve been charged with getting *this* curriculum down *that* throat. But they can’t just pry open the gullet and start pouring because we now know that students have to participate in their learning, remember? If they don’t play an active part, then the learning doesn’t stick. And if teachers aren’t careful, the what that kids learn becomes whatever they’re thinking about. A girl who sees a dragonfly on the windowsill and starts to imagine a filmy, iridescent dance costume and then wonders if she could move her arms the way the bug moves his wings and then notices his huge eyes and becomes curious about his vision—Can he see her? And why is he out in the day if he has those nocturnal-looking eyes?: This girl is learning, but she’s not learning the what of the curriculum for that class period. It’s awfully hard to keep kids thinking about the curriculum, but that’s a teacher’s job. If she does it well, then she is listening a lot and asking questions and conversing and challenging and demonstrating and guiding kids toward resources that might offer some insight. If the kids discover stuff on their own, they are by definition thinking about it, and so they are learning it.

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Every single thing you know right now has been thought about by you. Even things that seem mindless and automatic like reading and driving and walking. At one time or another, you gave these things some active thought. You put some cognitive energy into them, and now you know them.

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Don’t be fooled by the simplicity of this post. It’s a big deal. And it’s not just about kids and teachers. We learn what we think about. If there is something that you know—that you are burning to have others know—figure out a way to get them to think about it. Don’t just lecture. Ask them some questions and see if this brings them around to your own thinking. Supply some examples or give them a picture that illustrates your point. Have a conversation about it. If, after an energetic and creative process that includes debate and good faith listening on both your parts, your “learner” still doesn’t understand or get it or agree, you might want to consider whether your own truth needs a little adjustment. Maybe you are the one doing the learning right now.

Think about it.

Further Reading on Cognitive Development:

Piaget’s Theory of Cognitive and Affective Development, Wadsworth

Mind in Society, Vygotsky

Why Don’t Kids Like School: A Cognitive Scientist Answers Your Questions, Willingham

The Schools Our Children Deserve, Kohn