Learning is Slow, Social, and Effortful

We increasingly live in a world where less effort is required to do most things. You might not know it considering how much we complain about everything we do, but hear me out. When we do laundry, we throw it in one machine and walk away to do other things before coming back to throw it into a different machine that we are also able to walk away from. We spend a few minutes per load getting laundry clean and dry and a bit longer hanging and folding it. Our great grandparents, by contrast had to remain involved in the entire process, rubbing clothes against a washboard in a tub, hand wringing them, and then pinning them to a line. Apply this to almost any aspect of life (transportation, food preparation, obtaining drinkable water) and you recognize that we live in a time when life is easy unless we choose to make it difficult. We 

So, it is understandable that people believe learning should be easy now too. After all, everything else is. Surely, by taking advantage of modern tools, students can learn quickly, effortlessly, and on their own.

But here's the thing. While culture and tools have changed, the way the brain learns has not. I once heard an interview with a business giant (I can't remember which one, Bezos perhaps?) who was being asked constantly what changes he foresaw. He said he thought it was more valuable to think about the things that would not change because he could plan for those. The same may be true when it comes to teaching. Tools and methods will certainly come and go but what isn't going to change.

There are a few things that have always been true and always will be true due to the nature of the human brain:

Learning is a social activity  

While there are some instances of people who taught themselves with nothing more than a book and a strong will, those are exceptional. For most people, learning requires a teacher, a tutor, or a mentor. We see this both in the animal kingdom and throughout human history. In the middle ages, apprenticeships were the common way to train for a trade as as the experienced craftsman taught and gave feedback to the new hire as he learned. No one was expected to just figure it out for themselves. Wealthy people had libraries in their homes, yet they still hired private teachers for their children. When God wanted Adam to know things, he did not download information directly into his brain. He came to the Garden and walked and talked with him. One obvious reason for this is that the teacher usually has more knowledge, wisdom, and/or experience than the learner. The mentor has made mistakes and can help the learner avoid making the same ones. 

Much has been made of the potential of AI tutors in recent years, but they just aren't capable of that. I have no doubt that they could be programed to say the same words, but it isn't the same as the empathetic experience of someone who has been there. Chatbots can provide objective feedback, but they cannot deliver it with the warmth and understanding a student may need at a specific moment of frustration because the chatbot has never been frustrated. 

Recent studies carried out by Mary Helen Immordino-Yang's team shows that there is more neural activity in teacher's brains as they grade and give feedback on the work of their own students than there is when they perform the same task for students they do not know (in spite of giving them the same grade). Why? Because they are able to view their students as whole people, and they are thinking of them in social and emotional ways even as they grade academic work. I have not searched for studies on student neural activity, but I know from my experience as a student that I was more likely to take on the feedback of a teacher if I believed they were giving it in my best interests. (Note: I am not saying I had to have a warm, fuzzy relationship with a teacher to take their feedback. I am saying that I need to trust the teacher and find the teacher credible.) 

Learning is slow 

We talk so much about learning that I think we take for granted the idea that we all know what it is. What is actually happening when you learn a new vocabulary word, mathematical procedure, scientific concept, or dance movement? There is a change happening in your neurons. I won't take up space and time with the details of dendrites and myelin and all of that, but the connections between your brain cells increase in number and efficiency every time you learn something (whether or not you ever "use it in real life").

You cannot expect this to happen overnight. No one goes to a gym, does one workout, and expects that they will have a beach ready body when they wake up the next morning. Actually, I think there are some people who expect that. Let me try a different analogy. No one goes to the gym and thinks, "I haven't lifted a weight in five years, so I'll make up for lost time by lifting 500 pounds today. Then I'll be able to keep lifting that amount from now on." It seems we have a more common sense understanding of our bodies than we do of our minds. Durable change takes time, and that cannot be sped up with any technology. In fact, one important aspect of learning we often neglect is known as the spacing effect. The brain needs down time to go into "diffuse mode," allowing the newly input information time to transfer from the hippocampus to the neocortex. Sleep makes a difference too; connections that have been formed during the day either get broken or solidified during sleep (so I guess some of this does happen overnight). 

For decades, teachers have told their students cramming and late night sessions don't work. We now understand why that is true from a neurological perspective. Your neurons need time to change, and they cannot do it without stress, followed by rest, followed by rehearsal. Don't teach kids something in the morning and expect them to have it down cold by the afternoon. They need to retrieve it, get feedback, rest, and retrieve it again. 

Learning is effortful

And now, we arrive at my premise. Just because other things in our lives have become effortless doesn't mean that learning will follow suit. 

I've spent decades talking to students about their study habits. When I ask them to tell me what their current methods are, I get some combination of these three answers:

• I look over my notes
• I re-read the chapter
• I underline or highlight important content

When students are surveyed nationally about which study techniques are most effective, 75% of them answer with some combination of these three as well. But the research shows these to be the least effective techniques. Why? Because they are too passive. For your brain to create the conditions that form memories, you have to do enough to send the message, "Hey, she really wants to remember this."

Remember when I said that learning is making a change in your neurons? Well, that takes energy. There are chemical reactions that must happen that reorganize disordered systems into ordered ones. Physics and chemistry tell us that will require an intentional input of energy. Flipping through your notes and recognizing things isn't going to put in that required energy. Re-reading doesn't tell your brain you want to remember it; it makes it think it doesn't need to. And highlighting has been shown to have a negative impact on your memory.

The techniques that are effective, like retrieval practice, don't feel effective in the moment. When I leave Matt's weightlifting class with arm that feel like jello, unsure if I will even be able to hold them up long enough to wash my hair, I do not feel like I have gotten stronger. If anything, I wonder why I have weakened myself like this (same with my noodle-legs after a cycle class). Yet, I know that those are the very conditions that will strengthen my muscles over time.

In the same way, going through a deck of flashcards and getting half of the answers wrong makes students say, "See, this doesn't work." Yet, that reach for the answer (even when they get it wrong) is what creates the conditions for dendrite growth and myelination of neurons. In my role as yearbook advisor, I was once at a play rehearsal on the day the kids call "Crash and Burn Day." It's the first rehearsal they have off-book. It was simultaneously the most entertaining and cringey thing you can imagine. Students who thought they knew their lines found out they did not, and the poor girl with the cue book was working her tail off. I asked them later about how they would learn their lines after that day, and they gave the answer you would expect. They don't re-read the script or skim over their highlighted portions.  They run their lines with a partner - remembering them by trying to remember them. We all know that is the correct way. Yet, somehow, when it comes to academic content, we go back to passive mode and expect it to work.

In spite of what the applause line at conferences implying that education hasn't changed in centuries, those of us on the ground know that many things have changed and continue to change dramatically. The fact that students still sit in desks doesn't mean things have not changed. 

And some things shouldn't change - because the brain hasn't changed, and we need to work with it.