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Teaching Minds: How Cognitive Science Can Save Our Schools [Paperback]

Roger Schank
4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)

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Book Description

October 28, 2011
''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!

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Teaching Minds: How Cognitive Science Can Save Our Schools + Making Thinking Visible: How to Promote Engagement, Understanding, and Independence for All Learners
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Editorial Reviews

Review

''[Schank] rejects many 'truths' held by today's educators and politicians...the author believes society is better served when the focus is on improving the conceptual, analytical, and social processes of the individual rather than on acquiring factual knowledge.'' --ForeWord Magazine

''With stark honesty and a sharp focus on research, Schank has written a provocative, convincing, and useful book about the design of cognitively based learning experiences that can be applied to real contexts...Teaching Minds can undoubtedly help individual teachers, professors, leaders, and curriculum design teams to transform learning experiences for students at all levels.'' --Education Canada

About the Author

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.

Product Details

  • Paperback: 240 pages
  • Publisher: Teachers College Press (October 28, 2011)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 0807752665
  • ISBN-13: 978-0807752661
  • Product Dimensions: 6 x 0.6 x 9 inches
  • Shipping Weight: 12.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
  • Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
  • Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #488,162 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

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Customer Reviews

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
8 of 9 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars Must Read August 21, 2012
Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
I read education books for a living, to inform my own work and thinking, and I have to say, few books in the last 10 years have influenced my thinking as much as this book. It's a must read for anyone sincerely interested in a different, more relevant vision for learning for our kids. We have become a test centric nation that is motivated by old beliefs and paradigms that need, that must change. If you are a parent or anyone interested in education and preparing our kids for a much different future, please read this book.
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8 of 9 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars A very different view into K-12 Education November 30, 2011
Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
I am a big fan of Roger's work and frequently visit his websites for ideas and inspiration, so I was eager to read his new book. I was not disappointed! He provides some fascinating insights into the inner workings of the country's Kindergarten throught PhD education system. He has a novel understanding of how people think and learn and advocates creating an education system that is designed to focus on building cognitives skills and processes instead of focusing on the traditional academic content disciplines. As you read the book, you find yourself agreeing with many of his assertions and becoming angry at the entrenched system that blocks all attempts to allow his ideas to be implemented. Roger's fundamental approach to teaching and learning is through what he calls a Story Centered Curriculum. He follows his own advice by delivering most of the information in the book in a series of stories. The result is a very readable, enjoyable, and informative book. You should read it!
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5 of 5 people found the following review helpful
4.0 out of 5 stars Scrap the Teacher. Bring on the Mentor. October 21, 2012
Format:Paperback
I taught a few community college classes, volunteered in grade school classrooms for a few years, and have been teaching my own children for two years. What drags heaviest in these endeavors? Resistance.

Students want to get it over, move on, and get out. No matter how much I wanted them to love what I told them to do, only a few responded happily--and only rarely. They may have been people-pleasers; they may have genuinely liked the work or been grateful to get away from home.

I found Schank through articles in The Washington Post: "No, algebra isn't necessary--and yes, STEM is overrated" and "Why kids hate school--subject by subject".

Student resistance is to be expected, he says. You cannot teach someone something that 1. Does not help achieve some goal they actually hold; 2. Is not in line with their personality; 3. Goes against their subconscious beliefs. You can try. You won't succeed.

He goes on to list the CAPACITIES students should have, like how to diagnose, how to plan, how to influence, how to negotiate, etc.These skills come layered into the goals people naturally set for themselves as a means of getting something they want. They come from doing, trying, and failing. A car fanatic learns to diagnose engines. A parent learns to diagnose a child's quirks and cries. A gamer diagnoses how to advance levels.

Several capacities go along with any situation. Schank says that forcing people to learn subjects separate from each other ("Now let's learn to PLAN!") and devoid of a personal goal is a waste and ineffective.

He also lists *how* to teach these capacities, like "Don't teach it unless you can easily explain the use of learning it" and "A teacher's job is not to tell facts; it's to get students to understand the world better...to encourage them to take on more...to force students to come to conclusions by confronting what they already believe..."

Teachers are not the source of knowledge anymore. They are the mentors "encouraging thinking by making sure students have something confusing to think about."
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