Teaching Minds: How Cognitive Science Can Save Our Schools

Roger C. Schank

Teachers College Press, Apr 17, 2015 - Education - 223 pages

“Professor Roger Schank has long been one of the world’s most innovative thinkers about education. This book is the culmination of his lifetime of thinking about teaching and learning. Although I’ve known Roger for over 20 years, I’ve learned a lot from this book and I know that you will too.”
—Ray Bareiss, Professor and Director of Educational Programs, Carnegie Mellon Silicon Valley

“Finally, some fresh thinking about teaching and learning. You will come away understanding what’s wrong with how we teach today and what an effective pedagogy looks like. If you care about education, you will love love love this book!”

—Elliot Soloway, Arthur F. Thurnau Professor, University of Michigan

“Roger’s insights tend to be a decade or two ahead of the insights of others. You can find his insights in current machine translation technologies, recommender systems, game-based learning environments, and even intelligence-gathering systems. The insights in this book are likely to be equally prescient and enduring.”
—Janet L. Kolodner, Regents' Professor, Georgia Institute of Technology


“Roger Schank shows that we can learn more by concrete challenge and disagreement than through disinterested lectures and gingerly-put abstractions.”
—Jonathan Zittrain, Professor of Law and Professor of Computer Science, Harvard University

From grade school to graduate school, from the poorest public institutions to the most affluent private ones, our educational system is failing students. In his provocative new book, cognitive scientist and bestselling author Roger Schank argues that class size, lack of parental involvement, and other commonly-cited factors have nothing to do with why students are not learning. The culprit is a system of subject-based instruction and the solution is cognitive-based learning. This groundbreaking book defines what it would mean to teach thinking. The time is now for schools to start teaching minds!

Roger Schank was the founder of the renowned Institute for the Learning Sciences at Northwestern University, where he is John P. Evans Professor Emeritus in Computer Science, Education, and Psychology.

Contents

• Cognitive ProcessBased Education: 1
• Teaching Kids to Walk and Talk: 15
• What Cant You Teach?: 35
• Twelve Cognitive Processes That Underlie Learning: 45
• RealLife Learning Projects Considered: 57
• A Socratic Dialogue: 73
• KnowledgeBased Education vs ProcessBased Education: 75
• New Curricula for a New Way of Teaching: 89
• How to Teach the Twelve Cognitive Processes That Underlie Learning: 109
• Defining Intelligence: 137
• Restructuring the University: 157
• How Not to Teach: 171
• How the Best Universities Inadvertently Ruin Our Schools: 183
• What Can We Do About It?: 205
• Notes: 221
• About the Author: 223

About the author

Roger Schankwas the founder of the renowned Institute for the Learning Sciences at Northwestern University, where he is John P. Evans Professor Emeritus in Computer Science, Education, and Psychology. Visit Dr, Shanks's website at www.rogerschank.com and read his blog: educationoutrage.blogspot.com.

Bibliographic information

• Title: Teaching Minds: How Cognitive Science Can Save Our Schools
• Author: Roger C. Schank
• Publisher: Teachers College Press, 2015
• ISBN: 0807770906, 9780807770900
• Length: 223 pages
• Subjects: Education / General