Which country was the first ever to have universal, free, compulsory education? Zero points if you said "Prussia". The correct answer is the Aztec empire, almost four centuries before the oft-cited German state. I happened to find out this bizarre fact from an aside in a YouTube video, and decided to look into it. If this isn't an independent societal data point on the development of education, then I don't know what is! In this episode, I discuss the article Developing Face and Heart in the Time of the Fifth Sun: An Examination of Aztec Education by Timothy Reagan. You will hear about Aztec society and values, and how the education system fit within the society in order to achieve its educational aims. You will also hear a lot of bloody stories of human sacrifice. Enjoy the episode.

Education Bookcast

120. Aztec education

I realised I missed something, and I kicked myself. For a while I've been toying with the idea that learning occurs in two stages, which can be mapped between cognitive science and neuroscience: Exposure to new material -> neuronal connections Practice and repetition -> myelination ...with elaboration (e.g. relating one piece of information to another) being a practice that involves both stages. This model appeals to me for several reasons. Firstly, it is simple, which is a relief in the complex world of teaching and learning. Secondly, it is grounded in the idea that learning is all about addition to long-term memory, which is now a deeply ingrained idea with me. Thirdly, it is in line with the way that most teachers would teach, which makes sense - you would think that teachers tend to do something more or less right after so many years of experience. However, there is one anomaly that I couldn't place in this model: pre-testing. It turns out that when you are given a test on something before you start learning, even if you're completely ignorant of the topic, it boosts your learning compared to just starting off with study straight away. How could this make sense with the above? For a while I just brushed it aside, but now I realised how it would fit in, as "stage zero": humility, or realisation of ignorance. As I understand it, this is a stage where you can overcome your cognitive biases which make you not want to expend effort to learn anything, by assuming that you already know this, or that there is nothing to learn. Immediate exposure to a test shatters this illusion, and makes you more able - even subconsciously - to pay attention to the lesson. One of the great things about this way of thinking is that it makes room for some "progressive" ideas within the starkly "traditional" view of stages 1 and 2. While I still feel that progressive education is largely a bad idea and a failure, I don't want to become dogmatically married to another way of thinking, especially not one which is to some extent defined by its opposition to progressivism. The chance for at least some reconciliation through synthesis is something that I warmly welcome. In the recording, I also discuss how this relates to ideas of mental warm-ups, desirable difficulty, and the differences between learning and performance. Enjoy the episode.

119. Stages of learning

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.

118. The Man who Mistook his Wife for a Hat by Oliver Sacks

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

117. Gut Feelings by Gerd Gigerenzer

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.

116h. Summary and conclusion

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.

116g. Speech, silence, action

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.

116f. Socratic and Confucian mothers

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.

116e. Curiosity begets enquiry, heart begets dedication

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.

116d. Mind-oriented vs. Virtue-oriented learning processes

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.

116c. East Asians don't respond to intrinsic motivation, and other gems

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.

116b. Mastering the Universe vs. Transforming the Self

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")

116a. Cultural Foundations of Learning, East and West by Jin Li

"It’s as if someone were out there making up pointless jobs just for the sake of keeping us all working. And here, precisely, lies the mystery." The above text is from David Graeber's super-viral article On the Phenomenon of Bullshit Jobs. His basic, audacious thesis is that there is a large and increasing number of "bullshit" hours worked in the economy, through a combination of some outright "bullshit jobs", and previously normal jobs that have become increasingly "bullshitised". Graeber's intention with the word "bullshit" is completely unnecessary work that is useful to nobody, and a "bullshit job" typically contains much pretending to work while actually browsing social media, as well as carrying out a number of tasks that really don't need doing, but not being able to face up to the Kafkaesque reality head-on as there appears to be a taboo about letting people know that you aren't doing anything, or that your job is pointless. Ironically, such soul-destroying employment is often considered to be quite prestigious and sought-after by outsiders (who can't see what your day-to-day looks like), which only intensifies the confusion and feeling of being lost that holders of such jobs experience. It must be noted that jobs which are merely unpleasant, "shit jobs", are not in the same category. Being a cleaner at a university, for example, might lead to you being badly paid and looked down upon, but your job really counts. This is evidenced by the fact that if you strike, there will be problems. Compare this with the case in the 1970's when there was a strike of Irish banks for many months, and yet there appeared to be no problem, and the economy trundled along without a hitch. Graeber's article unleashed a reaction that he couldn't have possibly predicted. Not only did the article become so viral that, in the weeks after it was published, the site hosting it repeatedly crashed from the number of visitors (it was apparently particularly popular in finance circles), and anonymous donors paid for adverts quoting the original article to be placed on the London Underground; Graeber also received so much press and mail that he ended up able to conduct a book-length study on the subject on the basis of the qualitative data that he managed to gather. Bullshit jobs are a real conundrum, as they are theoretically impossible in an idealised capitalist system. Graeber rises to the challenge of at least trying to explain their existence. After proposing a taxonomy of bullshit jobs (flunkies, goons, duct-tapers, box-tickers, and taskmasters), the author leads us to compare the current situation with feudalism, pointing out that the idea of an economic sphere separate from politics only arose in the Enlightenment because that's the only point when it started to make sense - prior to that, economics and politics were too tightly intertwined for such an idea to even have been considered. On that basis, we can see how an economic system that is heavily geared towards redistribution rather than production (like feudalism), together with a historically unusual ideology of work and time, could lead us to the present situation. This book is certainly a mind-expanding and wild intellectual ride, but it appears that the study of bullshit employment is only in its infancy. Nevertheless, I certainly believe the question to be relevant to education. If education is supposed to prepare people to enter the workforce, and the workforce is significantly, or even predominantly, engaged in bullshit, what does that say about what we should be preparing young people for? Enjoy the episode.

115. Bullshit Jobs by David Graeber

I was recently contacted by a fan of the show asking for advice in the choice of their research topic. Oddly, the best advice I could give them pertained to philosophy of science. In this episode, I expand on what I told them, to explain the most important ideas in the philosophy of science that I think are worth knowing about. My ultimate target is Imre Lakatos. If you can understand Lakatos' idea of research programs then you have all you need. However, in order to properly understand Lakatos, you need to know about Thomas Kuhn's concept of paradigms, "normal" science, and scientific revolutions; and to understand Kuhn, it helps to have some grounding in what Karl Popper had to say about falsificationism before him. I add in Francis Bacon as the founder of science and William of Occam just to mention his timeless razor. The "feel" of this episode is to say that science is done by people, and people are imperfect. Philosophers of science have long discussed the ways in which science should be (or is) done, and as we get to Kuhn and Lakatos it becomes more a case of explaining the often infuriating way that people don't seem to rationally update their worldviews. Paul Feyerabend makes an appearance between Kuhn and Lakatos in this episode to show off some of the more anarchistic views of science, and to help demonstrate through the apparent "cheating" of Galileo and the failings of the Copernican system how sometimes a little stubborn imagination in the face of rational refutation has been good for scientific progress. I am also very happy to bring in my favourite scientific paper of all time, The Myth of Language Universals: Language Diversity and its Importance for Cognitive Science by Evans and Levinson. I use it as an example of how a longstanding theory seems to be alive and kicking despite what seem to be decades of continual refutation, and how this exemplifies Lakatos' idea of research programs, while also seizing the opportunity to talk a little bit about the wonders of linguistic diversity. Overall, I hope that I can convince some people of the relevance of ideas in the philosophy of science to the much more practical issues of research, including why people who are wrong are so hard to convince. Enjoy the episode.

114. Philosophy of Science - the good bits

When we ask the question of whether something is "nature or nurture", we are implicitly suggesting a dichotomy, or excluded middle - it is either nature, or nurture, or a mix of both, but not a mix of both plus something else. In The Hidden Half, Michael Blastland takes us on a journey of skepticism which somehow magically reveals the presence not only of a "third factor", but shows, startlingly, that such a factor has been known to account for as much as half (!) of the variation in some traits. References to dark matter immediately spring to mind. After reflecting on a paradigm-shifting species of parthenogenic crayfish, the author discusses, among other things, how you only have a 50% chance of developing the same mental disorder as your identical twin you were raised with is already suffering from (shared genes and environment, remember - shouldn't this be close to 100%?); the mysterious inability to transfer infant mortality reduction measures to new regions; and the still inexplicable sudden drop in teenage pregnancies in the UK around 2008. One could see Blastland as occupying allied but opposite territory to the human irrationality parade, spearheaded by the likes of Daniel Kahneman and Dan Ariely. Blastland contends that yes, we do misunderstand the world a lot, but rather than focusing on the human weaknesses of irrationality, he draws our attention to the fact that the world is just really, really, intractably hard to understand. In that sense, you could see him loosely affiliated with Nassim Taleb. Another way of seeing Blastland is as a voice (however inadvertantly) in the incredibly important but widely ignored literature on transfer of learning. I covered Robert Haskell's book on the topic recently, and one of the central messages was that people don't seem to be very good at transfer of learning. Blastland's position would be that the world is not very amenable to transfer of learning. Again, it's not people's fault, the world just is that way. This book came as a powerful message to me on the limits of human knowledge (relevant to the enterprise of this podcast) and an alternative view on human irrationality and transfer of learning (relevant to its content). I would like to get a picture of a marmokrebs crayfish and put it in a frame on my desk, so that I never forget the book's central message. Enjoy the episode. *** RELATED EPISODES 110. Transfer of Learning by Robert Haskell 108. Expert Political Judgement by Phillip Tetlock 11. Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman

113. The Hidden Half by Michael Blastland

Education Bookcast is a podcast principally for teachers and parents who would like to know more about education. We cover one education-related book or article each episode, going over the key points, placing it in context, and making connections with other ideas, topics, and authors. Topics include psychology, philosophy, history, and economics of education; pedagogy and teaching methods; neurology and cognitive science; and schools and school systems in historical and international perspective.

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Education Bookcast

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