(Compulsory) schooling is unnecessary and often harmful (see for example: this or that) Let’s grant that and move forward. The reality as it is, is that schools exist. And in almost all nations children must attend, or at least education is and insofar as homeschooling is possible in some countries, in others this option is terribly difficult to arrange and many roadblocks exist for parents who wish to homeschool. Homeschooling in most countries does not mean a parent can just teach anything they like. They usually still have to teach the standard/national curriculum in many cases and also demonstrate they do this "competently". I admit homeschooling can be far less coercive than at-school schooling. But in many nations, some of the worst coercion is still there. For example: the requirement to pass examinations. But I digress.
For a child in a school and for a kind teacher who wants to help with learning as best they can given the circumstances of their role, much pseudoscience and irrationality abounds in “education theory”. How best to learn? What do the “experts” know? One might well say, “Almost nothing: it’s all bad!” But that is of no practical help to the teacher or the student. So is there anything known about learning? Some Basically that link explains it all comes down to “guess and check” or “conjecture and refutation” if you prefer, as explained by Popper. But this is coarse grained and the only practical consequence for learning is that you shouldn’t try to force kids to learn stuff they don’t want to learn because that’s forcing them to solve a problem they don’t have and all learning is problem solving. And that undermines the whole raison d'etre for compulsory schooling in the first place. But given we have compulsory schooling and are stuck therefore between a rock and a hard place in terms of forcing kids to go to school while you can’t force learning, what can be done to help learning? Is there anything else at all? Well tend towards as little coercion as possible in classrooms where the system itself is necessarily coercive. But then what about what else we know from neuroscience or psychology-of-learning? Is anything there useful? If the course-grained approach tells us to let children "guess and check" - but also they will do this regardless of being taught (because it's their/our nature) - is there anything more fine grained to help with the "guess and check" scheme? Some try to be more fine grained - but few "theorists" are even aware of Popper let alone in a mood to take seriously the laws of epistemology. Rather too much or almost all attempts to improve learning is demonstrably false and even harmful but nonetheless assumed true or partly true by the education sector. So what is a teacher to do to help with learning?
Most well-meaning teachers might attempt to embrace the “learning style” of the child. But, which learning style, though? Perhaps some of these. Notice all the different styles of styles there. Many different so-called “models”. These conjure images of either astrological star signs or Hippocrates’ “four temperaments” . So called “learning styles” have been criticized by psychologists and neuroscientists (or just google "learning styles" and "neuroscience". But even where the psychologists or neuroscientists publish papers refuting classical "learning styles" they'll explicitly endorse others. For example here's a paper from the journal "Nature Reviews Neuroscience": https://scottbarrykaufman.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/nrn3817.pdf This paper is ostensibly about busting “neuromyths” and the idea of learning styles. All very good. However it softly endorses other kinds of learning style - new "scientific" styles – the so-called “biological determinism” styles. Now it’s not the worst offender here, and is an unusual paper so far as it goes for making the case that what are said to be biologically determined brain states can actually change. This is good but rare in the field where it is thought some “styles” are more deeply entrenched than others and may be somewhere between very difficult to impossible to change. This is the state of play at the moment. While neuroscience refutes some myths…it has invented new ones. Of course they do not call these new “styles” styles at all – they are "conditions", "disorders" or "disabilities" such as listed in that paper. They are things supposedly “biologically determined” and we know this, they say, because we can observe (like good scientists do) similarities in brain images on an fMRI machine. ADHD and other learning “disorders” are said to be in this category, by some. Many with ADHD show similar activity where others might not so this is seen as objective “proof” of the existence of such a disorder rather than what certain people choose to do with their brain more often than some others. I imagine people like me who have terrible "pitch" would probably show similar fMRI images when we try to tell you which musical note is higher. I struggle to hear pitch well. Though I have improved over time, I'm just not interested in improving my musical ability much. But I imagine I could if I wanted to. I just don't want to. Now if I tried and learned to have perfect or near-perfect pitch, I imagine my brain would change. We know this happens (so called neuroplasticity). Far from the brain condemning the mind to be a certain way, it will be the case that learning changes the images on that fMRI scanner when we learn to engage this or that bit of hardware better. Indeed that previous paper makes this very point. Whatever the case, the older “learning styles” or the new “disabilities” – these ideas condemn children with “well your biological brain is such that you cannot do X and must instead do Y in order to learn Z”. How do we know “it’s all myths”? We will come to this.
The idea of a learning style, classically speaking is that someone might learn somethings better by reading. Others by listening. Others by moving. Ok, so far as it goes, some people prefer those activities over others. But it’s near no-one, disabilities like sight or hearing loss aside, who exclusively wants to listen and never read or vice versa.
It’s all myths.
The mind is software running on the hardware that is the brain. Brains and minds are not the same, just as Microsoft Word is not an Apple iPhone. Now Apple iPhones can indeed run Microsoft Word (by the way, it’s a free app on the App Store!). A brain is a universal computer. It can compute anything at all. It might take longer than a calculator to compute 4533 x 9735 most of the time (but not all of the time (see people like Arthur Benjamin) and all computers can be reduced to so-called “Turing Machines” – basically Alan Turing’s invention and discovery of computation back before there were (universal) computers at all in the 1930s. Computation, on this explanation, is modeled by a long strip of paper divided into boxes onto which can be written a symbol or not. A “read head” can read what’s in the box and then the box can either be erased, written to or the read head can move. That’s basically what a computer does in order to “compute”. That’s all “the hardware” side of things. The software bit is the set of instructions telling the read head what to do so that it eventually writes out the solution to the question asked of it. Now a person can model a Turing machine. A person can do exactly what a Turing machine can do. No one would actually ever do this - try to compute something using strips of paper and making marks in boxes (unless you’re a mathematics student in a class learning about how Turing machines work (I too once had to write a Turing machine program for adding two numbers like this) but in principle we humans can model Turing machines and Turing machines are provably universal. So we are by extension universal computers. A universal computer is a computer that can compute anything that is computable. And what is computable is: any physical process. David Deutsch proved this (to be fair the "original" Turing machine invented by Turing can indeed compute any physical process as well but not necessarily in a tractable way. This means that, for example to model something like the motion of electrons in an atom (or other quantum systems) couldn’t be done in a “reasonable” time (reasonable = less than the lifetime of the universe!) – but Deutsch’s quantum computer makes some such computations tractable. It is a different mode of computation to that of a "classical" Turing Machine.
But we are more than just Turing Machine emulators, obviously. We are more than just universal computers. We are also universal explainers (another discovery of David Deutsch's...this one about the nature of personhood). A "universal explainer" is something which can in principle (if not always in practice, in time) explain anything that can be explained. And what can be explained? All physical processes. An explanation is likewise just another kind of computation. It has to consist of a finite number of steps which model some phenomena.
So people can explain anything in principle and also learn anything in principle. This isn’t a neuroscience theory or a psychological paradigm (although it should inform such things) – it is a conclusion from what we know of the laws of physics. It is like a “principle of people” – what people are. People are universal explainers. It is the thing we do.
So what place, then, for learning styles? Given we – all of us – are capable in principle of learning anything and modeling whatever mental activity anyone else can do (because we’re universal, remember) – there can be no “biologically determined” constraint on learning. The only possible constraint can be memory (but we can write things down or use computers) or processing speed (but again, any of us can beat Arthur Benjamin with a pocket calculator – we just need to pick large enough numbers. But we could also learn to BE Arthur Benjamin in terms of arithmetic if we cared enough to try and learn. No doubt Arthur spent years refining that amazing skill. But it’s just a skill nonetheless: namely it’s a thing that can be learned.)
If a child says they prefer reading we might say “they are a visual learner” or if they say they prefer not to speak (on the rare occasion they do) we might say “they are autistic or Asperger’s). But these preferences – and they are preferences – should never be interpreted as condemnations. Autism/Aspergers is a kind of personality. Not a disorder. Visual learners likewise are just conveying a preference. But preferences can change.
The key here is this: take seriously what a child asks for when they’re trying to learn. If they want to read, help them find books they like. If they don’t want to talk, don’t force, cajole or coerce them. Let them draw or write. But don’t take seriously the idea: this is what they will always prefer and they “cannot” do otherwise. If an educational psychologist diagnoses James with a condition of being unable to sketch and unable to dance due to an inability to process rhythm because of some “auditory processing” problem (but no physical ear problem)…should we deny James opportunities to draw and dance? Should that factor into our treatment of James? Only if James asks or indicates this is what he wants. In reality all of James’ behaviour is perfectly consistent with James’ desire not to do those things. And quite right. But just because on Monday, or last month, or in last year’s class James didn’t want to sketch and so now teachers inherit a tradition of offering “alternate” work for James doesn’t mean James cannot change his mind. And telling James he has this learning disorder or learning disability is a terrible condemnation...even if your “neuromyth” tells you it’s not biologically determined but is a genuine “condition” nonetheless.
A better approach: we’ve all got preferences. Preferences can change. For now you might not like reading. But that doesn’t mean you inherently have trouble reading. You don’t have a “visual processing disorder” – you just have a preference. And it might well be temporary: caused by ideas you yourself aren’t even yet fully aware of even having. You never have to read if you don’t want to. But if you do want to – you can. And you can do it as well as anyone else. Because you’re big like a universe inside. You’re universal. And it’s actually been proven that you can do anything.
For a child in a school and for a kind teacher who wants to help with learning as best they can given the circumstances of their role, much pseudoscience and irrationality abounds in “education theory”. How best to learn? What do the “experts” know? One might well say, “Almost nothing: it’s all bad!” But that is of no practical help to the teacher or the student. So is there anything known about learning? Some Basically that link explains it all comes down to “guess and check” or “conjecture and refutation” if you prefer, as explained by Popper. But this is coarse grained and the only practical consequence for learning is that you shouldn’t try to force kids to learn stuff they don’t want to learn because that’s forcing them to solve a problem they don’t have and all learning is problem solving. And that undermines the whole raison d'etre for compulsory schooling in the first place. But given we have compulsory schooling and are stuck therefore between a rock and a hard place in terms of forcing kids to go to school while you can’t force learning, what can be done to help learning? Is there anything else at all? Well tend towards as little coercion as possible in classrooms where the system itself is necessarily coercive. But then what about what else we know from neuroscience or psychology-of-learning? Is anything there useful? If the course-grained approach tells us to let children "guess and check" - but also they will do this regardless of being taught (because it's their/our nature) - is there anything more fine grained to help with the "guess and check" scheme? Some try to be more fine grained - but few "theorists" are even aware of Popper let alone in a mood to take seriously the laws of epistemology. Rather too much or almost all attempts to improve learning is demonstrably false and even harmful but nonetheless assumed true or partly true by the education sector. So what is a teacher to do to help with learning?
Most well-meaning teachers might attempt to embrace the “learning style” of the child. But, which learning style, though? Perhaps some of these. Notice all the different styles of styles there. Many different so-called “models”. These conjure images of either astrological star signs or Hippocrates’ “four temperaments” . So called “learning styles” have been criticized by psychologists and neuroscientists (or just google "learning styles" and "neuroscience". But even where the psychologists or neuroscientists publish papers refuting classical "learning styles" they'll explicitly endorse others. For example here's a paper from the journal "Nature Reviews Neuroscience": https://scottbarrykaufman.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/nrn3817.pdf This paper is ostensibly about busting “neuromyths” and the idea of learning styles. All very good. However it softly endorses other kinds of learning style - new "scientific" styles – the so-called “biological determinism” styles. Now it’s not the worst offender here, and is an unusual paper so far as it goes for making the case that what are said to be biologically determined brain states can actually change. This is good but rare in the field where it is thought some “styles” are more deeply entrenched than others and may be somewhere between very difficult to impossible to change. This is the state of play at the moment. While neuroscience refutes some myths…it has invented new ones. Of course they do not call these new “styles” styles at all – they are "conditions", "disorders" or "disabilities" such as listed in that paper. They are things supposedly “biologically determined” and we know this, they say, because we can observe (like good scientists do) similarities in brain images on an fMRI machine. ADHD and other learning “disorders” are said to be in this category, by some. Many with ADHD show similar activity where others might not so this is seen as objective “proof” of the existence of such a disorder rather than what certain people choose to do with their brain more often than some others. I imagine people like me who have terrible "pitch" would probably show similar fMRI images when we try to tell you which musical note is higher. I struggle to hear pitch well. Though I have improved over time, I'm just not interested in improving my musical ability much. But I imagine I could if I wanted to. I just don't want to. Now if I tried and learned to have perfect or near-perfect pitch, I imagine my brain would change. We know this happens (so called neuroplasticity). Far from the brain condemning the mind to be a certain way, it will be the case that learning changes the images on that fMRI scanner when we learn to engage this or that bit of hardware better. Indeed that previous paper makes this very point. Whatever the case, the older “learning styles” or the new “disabilities” – these ideas condemn children with “well your biological brain is such that you cannot do X and must instead do Y in order to learn Z”. How do we know “it’s all myths”? We will come to this.
The idea of a learning style, classically speaking is that someone might learn somethings better by reading. Others by listening. Others by moving. Ok, so far as it goes, some people prefer those activities over others. But it’s near no-one, disabilities like sight or hearing loss aside, who exclusively wants to listen and never read or vice versa.
It’s all myths.
The mind is software running on the hardware that is the brain. Brains and minds are not the same, just as Microsoft Word is not an Apple iPhone. Now Apple iPhones can indeed run Microsoft Word (by the way, it’s a free app on the App Store!). A brain is a universal computer. It can compute anything at all. It might take longer than a calculator to compute 4533 x 9735 most of the time (but not all of the time (see people like Arthur Benjamin) and all computers can be reduced to so-called “Turing Machines” – basically Alan Turing’s invention and discovery of computation back before there were (universal) computers at all in the 1930s. Computation, on this explanation, is modeled by a long strip of paper divided into boxes onto which can be written a symbol or not. A “read head” can read what’s in the box and then the box can either be erased, written to or the read head can move. That’s basically what a computer does in order to “compute”. That’s all “the hardware” side of things. The software bit is the set of instructions telling the read head what to do so that it eventually writes out the solution to the question asked of it. Now a person can model a Turing machine. A person can do exactly what a Turing machine can do. No one would actually ever do this - try to compute something using strips of paper and making marks in boxes (unless you’re a mathematics student in a class learning about how Turing machines work (I too once had to write a Turing machine program for adding two numbers like this) but in principle we humans can model Turing machines and Turing machines are provably universal. So we are by extension universal computers. A universal computer is a computer that can compute anything that is computable. And what is computable is: any physical process. David Deutsch proved this (to be fair the "original" Turing machine invented by Turing can indeed compute any physical process as well but not necessarily in a tractable way. This means that, for example to model something like the motion of electrons in an atom (or other quantum systems) couldn’t be done in a “reasonable” time (reasonable = less than the lifetime of the universe!) – but Deutsch’s quantum computer makes some such computations tractable. It is a different mode of computation to that of a "classical" Turing Machine.
But we are more than just Turing Machine emulators, obviously. We are more than just universal computers. We are also universal explainers (another discovery of David Deutsch's...this one about the nature of personhood). A "universal explainer" is something which can in principle (if not always in practice, in time) explain anything that can be explained. And what can be explained? All physical processes. An explanation is likewise just another kind of computation. It has to consist of a finite number of steps which model some phenomena.
So people can explain anything in principle and also learn anything in principle. This isn’t a neuroscience theory or a psychological paradigm (although it should inform such things) – it is a conclusion from what we know of the laws of physics. It is like a “principle of people” – what people are. People are universal explainers. It is the thing we do.
So what place, then, for learning styles? Given we – all of us – are capable in principle of learning anything and modeling whatever mental activity anyone else can do (because we’re universal, remember) – there can be no “biologically determined” constraint on learning. The only possible constraint can be memory (but we can write things down or use computers) or processing speed (but again, any of us can beat Arthur Benjamin with a pocket calculator – we just need to pick large enough numbers. But we could also learn to BE Arthur Benjamin in terms of arithmetic if we cared enough to try and learn. No doubt Arthur spent years refining that amazing skill. But it’s just a skill nonetheless: namely it’s a thing that can be learned.)
If a child says they prefer reading we might say “they are a visual learner” or if they say they prefer not to speak (on the rare occasion they do) we might say “they are autistic or Asperger’s). But these preferences – and they are preferences – should never be interpreted as condemnations. Autism/Aspergers is a kind of personality. Not a disorder. Visual learners likewise are just conveying a preference. But preferences can change.
The key here is this: take seriously what a child asks for when they’re trying to learn. If they want to read, help them find books they like. If they don’t want to talk, don’t force, cajole or coerce them. Let them draw or write. But don’t take seriously the idea: this is what they will always prefer and they “cannot” do otherwise. If an educational psychologist diagnoses James with a condition of being unable to sketch and unable to dance due to an inability to process rhythm because of some “auditory processing” problem (but no physical ear problem)…should we deny James opportunities to draw and dance? Should that factor into our treatment of James? Only if James asks or indicates this is what he wants. In reality all of James’ behaviour is perfectly consistent with James’ desire not to do those things. And quite right. But just because on Monday, or last month, or in last year’s class James didn’t want to sketch and so now teachers inherit a tradition of offering “alternate” work for James doesn’t mean James cannot change his mind. And telling James he has this learning disorder or learning disability is a terrible condemnation...even if your “neuromyth” tells you it’s not biologically determined but is a genuine “condition” nonetheless.
A better approach: we’ve all got preferences. Preferences can change. For now you might not like reading. But that doesn’t mean you inherently have trouble reading. You don’t have a “visual processing disorder” – you just have a preference. And it might well be temporary: caused by ideas you yourself aren’t even yet fully aware of even having. You never have to read if you don’t want to. But if you do want to – you can. And you can do it as well as anyone else. Because you’re big like a universe inside. You’re universal. And it’s actually been proven that you can do anything.