Teaching Minds: How Cognitive Science Can Save Our Schools

A must reading for all educators interested in why most students in our schools remain bored and academically disengaged. I am certain that some educators reading this book will be unhappy with the author's relentless criticism of school leaders, who accept our currently outdated approach to curriculum and instruction and for that matter schooling as the norm. Our accepted fact based, just in case curriculum, serves no function in a career world less concerned with what you know then how you think.

This is a great book. Roger Schank has a lot of experience and insight with classroom and computer teaching.He analyzes the basic assumptions that are made about school, teaching and learning.He explains why so much of school is binge and purge learning with little long term retention.If you want a deeper understanding of the process, this is the book.

This book is good but the I ordered a NEW book and got a used one with damage.

I had to put this book down several times. He is obviously quite qualified to write this book, however, he believes quite a few things that flies in the face of accepted pedagogy. I have a PhD in Education and was always taught that we needed to assess the learner to be able to move them forward. People learn differently and presenting the same content in different ways allows different learners to be able to grasp concepts. Some students need to hear the content, while others are tactile or visual. Schank seems to think there is a single cure for everyone who is worth teaching. I'm just not a fan.

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!

The books says all the right things, and says them with a great deal of subtle humor. Criticism of the status quo in education is dead on target. However, the weakest area, lacking clarity and scope, is in Dr. Schank's description of the implementation of alternatives that provide opportunity for learners to use higher-level cognitive skills. Using case studies/stories is only one of many possibilities. The best learning resource for use of advanced cognition is reality, selected and investigated using systemic analysis. Other learning resources are uninterpreted primary sources of various kinds.

If you want to shake your ideas about teaching and education, read this one.Roger Schank wants to rebuild the whole foundation of education, and he arguesvery convincingly for more broad, competence-based, rather than fact-based curricula.It is generic processes like diagnosis, planning, analysis, critical thinking, etc. that are universalto all professions, and these should be at the center stage. Examples would, of course,be selected differently in all fields of study.

This book has completely changed the way that I want to teach. That's humbling to say after 10 years of teaching but the scales really fell from the eyes, almost from the very first paragraph of the book.

Highly descriptive and chatty style, for me it lacked the rigorous analysis and holistic thinking that I would expect in a book of this kind these days. Too often he saw the brain as a closed system and failed to understand the vital role that quality of sensory inputs play or how the work of people like Sally Goddard Blythe relate to what goes on in a learning environment.

... another view on how to improve our public education systems while including special ed children in mainstream schools on every grade level.

good book.Topics covered are unique.