Education Bookcast

This book touched my heart, and it changed my mind about neuroscience. I wasn't going to read this book. While I was at my friend's house, I picked this book up and read the preface, written by Will Self. He wrote that Oliver Sacks is extraordinary in the way in which he fuses such humanity with his scientific probing of the brains of his patients. At that point, I got interested, and my friend told me I could borrow it. I gobbled the book up in two days. Having read the book, I can see what Will Self was saying. I used to feel that neurologists were dehumanising of people, seeing them as a pile of neurons, and seeing themselves arrogantly as masters of the most important discipline. Oliver Sacks couldn't be more different. He has a real care for the humanity, for the soul of his patients, even as he describes the areas of brain damage. He marries up scientific description and human concern in a way that is life-affirming and touching. I used to think that neuroscience is too low-level to be relevant to education, and that higher-level cognitive science is enough. To a large extent, I still believe this. Neuroscience in education seems to me like trying to understand why your browser plugin isn't working properly by inspecting your computer's microchips - yes, the fundamental problem is there somehow, but it's just not the best way of solving the issue. Eric Jensen's useless book Brain-based Learning also vividly showed how neuroscience seems incapable of making a tractable theory or set of coherent principles for teachers and others in education to work from (I covered this book in detail in episode 53). However, I now see a different relevance to neuroscience. Just as psychologists have been sampling too narrowly by focusing almost exclusively on Western university undergraduates, so have they been sampling too narrowly by only looking at people without brain damage. I see neurology now as a new ground in which to sample widely, in order to get a proper sense of how the mind works by considering really different minds, or minds that don't seem to work properly. Enjoy the episode.

This episode feels almost nostalgic, as it is a return to the theme of the roles and interactions of the conscious and subconscious mind, something which I focused on early in the podcast and came out strongly in my main series on expertise (around episode 20). It also shares some relation to books on the topic of cognitive biases on the one hand, and the complexity of the world on the other. Psychologist Gerd Gigerenzer has two main points to make: firstly, that ignorance and cognitive biases often outperform knowledge and "clear thinking"; and secondly, he proposes a way in which gut feelings work. On the first point, Gigerenzer points us to some experiments which are convincing of their point but difficult to know how to make use of. It turns out that, in tasks like guessing which of two cities has the larger population, if you've heard of one but not the other, the one you've heard of is probably more populous. This requires that you are "somewhat ignorant" - you know one city but not the other - as if you are completely ignorant (not heard of either) or somewhat knowledgeable (heard of both) then you can't use this trick. It seems very impractical to try to reach a perfect state of mild ignorance in everything in order to use this trick, and you would have to give up the benefits of knowledge in order to do so... Nevertheless, the theoretical point is well made. On the second point, Gigerenzer proposes that gut feelings are simple rules that cut out most of the information, and they often make use of an algorithm called "take the best". The algorithm works like this: you compare whether the available options in the most important feature, then the next important feature, and so on, until in one of the comparisons one of the options is clearly better, at which point you choose that one. So, for example, if you're choosing a restaurant, maybe you first think about the food, but two places both have good food; then you compare atmosphere, but both atmospheres are good; then you compare price, and find one is considerably cheaper, so you go there. Overall Gigerenzer's work makes a welcome contribution to thinking about the nature of intuition. Probably the most insightful idea is that gut feelings use simple rules, because that way they can cut out the noise and make decisions easier. Richard Dawkins apparently once claimed that when we catch a ball we must be implicitly solving partial differential equations; Gigerenzer shows that this is probably not what happens. Enjoy the episode. *** RELATED EPISODES Phenomenology of learning / relation between conscious and subconscious mind: 7. The Practicing Mind by Thomas Sterner; 9. The Inner Game of Tennis by Timothy Gallwey; 10. Flow by Mihály Csíkszentmihályi; 17. Blink by Malcolm Gladwell; 49. The Art of Learning by Josh Waitzkin; 64. What Bruce Lee taught me about learning Mental architecture: 79. What learning is; 80. The Chimp Paradox by Steve Peters Expertise: 18. Bounce by Matthew Syed; 20. Genius Explained by Michael Howe; 22. The Talent Code by Daniel Coyle; 24. Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell Expertise in "wicked" domains: 98. Range by David Epstein; 108. Expert Political Judgement by Phillip Tetlock The world is complicated: 113. The Hidden Half by Michael Blastland Cognitive biases: 11. Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman; 12. "Picture yourself as a stereotypical male" by Michelle Goffreda

This episode concludes the series on Jin Li's fantastic book Cultural Foundations of Learning, East and West. After reviewing the key differences between the cultures of learning, we quickly look once again at the evidence for these claims. Then we will see what Chinese teachers think of American educational practices. Finally, I will add some commentary of where in my own learning I have some apparently Eastern views and practices. Enjoy the episode.

This is the final part of the series on Jin Li's book Cultural Foundations of Learning, East and West before the summary and conclusion. Speech is seen in the West as a distinct personal quality, a right, a leadership trait, and an art. Rhetoric was part of university curricula since the Middle Ages, and we celebrate famous orators like Cicero, Martin Luther King, and Winston Churchill. But in the East, speech is not seen so favourably. Chinese people assume that those who speak less are likely the more intelligent (in America it is those who speak more who are thus perceived), and Chinese culture has a general distrust of speaking, seeing it as inferior to action and potentially a way to mislead. Notably, unlike Cicero, King, and Churchill, there are no famous speakers in East Asia. This different attitude to speaking has consequences for education. Notably, we know from experiment that Chinese people's thought process is inhibited when they vocalise, whereas this is not true for Americans. But it also leads to a different set of educational aims and practices, and changes what is valued in students. Enjoy the episode.

This is a continuation of the series on Jin Li's book Cultural Foundations of Learning, East and West. In this recording, we will see how mothers interact with their children in such a way as to promote their cultural worldview, which goes a long way to explaining how the culture is perpetuated. Interestingly, it is clear from the sample interactions that the children often do not know how to respond to the parent, and so have not yet learned the cultural mindset, so we get a real sense of attitudinal transmission going on through the interactions. Enjoy the episode.

This is a continuation of the series on Jin Li's book Cultural Foundations of Learning, East and West. In this episode, we will see the emotional side of learning, with a Western focus on interest, curiosity, and enquiry juxtaposed against an Eastern focus on dedication, conviction, and commitment. This also leads to a different conceptualisation of time within the sphere of learning, which leads to concepts like success and failure make less sense in a Chinese cultural context. Since the process of learning never ends (or, at least, is considered to be very long), one cannot that one has reached "success" or "failure" at any stage, as things could always get better (through application and virtue) or worse (through becoming slack and irresponsible). Westerners, in contrast, have a much shorter-term and piecemeal view, seeing motivation as dependent on the nature of the material (empirically shown to not be important to Easterners), and viewing learning problems as requiring technical solutions (rather than heart- and character-based solutions proposed by the East). This is also reflected in (Western) psychology research, with emphases on achievement motivation, intrinsic motivation, and self-esteem, none of which have much currency or empirical validity, or for that matter make any sense, in an East Asian context. Enjoy the episode.

This is a continuation of the discussion of Jin Li's book Cultural Foundations of Learning, East and West. In this recording, I discuss the differences between Western learning process concepts (active learning, exploration and enquiry, critical thinking, and self-expression) and Chinese ones (sincerity, diligence, endurance of hardship, perseverance, and concentration). Enjoy the episode.

This is the third in a series of recordings on Jin Li's book Cultural Foundations of Learning, East and West. In this episode we will see a range of empirical data reflecting the differences between the cultures in question, mostly from psychology, including issues of motivation, attitudes to competition, and the language which is used to describe learning. I will also discuss British and Chinese students' views of the nature of understanding, pointing out what existing cognitive science has to say about this issue. Enjoy the episode.

This is the second in a series of recordings on Jin Li's book Cultural Foundations of Learning, East and West. In this part, we will see how the fundamental aims of education differ among the cultures in question, and how this is grounded in philosophical traditions that go back thousands of years. At the end, we will see a startling and unexpected piece of evidence which supports the author's hypothesis. Enjoy the episode.

You may have noticed that I am generally quite disappointed in professors of education. It seems that the work of cognitive scientists, (some) psychologists, anthropologists, (some) economists, historians, and even machine learning researchers and philosophers is reliable, trustworthy, and can offer a good contribution, whereas that has not been my experience with people explicitly employed by university education departments. However, Jin Li breaks that trend. And boy, how she breaks it. Cultural Foundations of Learning, East and West follows Jin Li's research into the nature and causes of differences in learning beliefs, attitudes, and behaviours between Westerners (mainly European-Americans) and people from "the East" (mainly Chinese, Taiwanese, and Chinese-Americans). She goes into issues of parenting, teaching techniques, student attitudes, language usage, and underlying philosophy. Overall, she paints a coherent picture which is invaluable to helping see the water in which we are swimming. What is really striking about her work is the degree to which she peers into people's souls. By explicitly stating hidden assumptions of Western culture, she not only deftly expresses how well she understands you (which can be a bit unnerving), but demonstrates how your most deeply held beliefs, so deep that you would not have even considered them beliefs but obvious truisms, not only don't have to be accepted by other cultures, but in fact usually aren't. In the process, she peers into her own soul (with the help of a large body of cultural evidence) to reveal the thinking style of her own Chinese origins. The result is mind-expanding in the way only good anthropology can be. I will be covering this book over many parts. This first part will serve as an introduction to the main themes of the book, and to the author herself. Enjoy the episode. ### RELATED EPISODES 39a, b. The Geography of Though by Richard Nisbett (on the differences between "Eastern" and "Western" cultures more broadly, not just about learning) 106a-h. The Anthroplogy of Childhood by David Lancy (comparing childhood across many human societies, not just "East vs. West")