Why Don't Students Like School?

    Most of the teachers I know entered the job because they loved school as children.____ However, they are understandably discouraged when they find that some of their students don't like school much, and that they, the teachers, have great difficulty inspiring them. Why is it difficult to make school enjoyable for students?

    As a matter of fact , the brain is not designed for thinking. It's designed to ask you not to have to think, because the brain is actually not very good at thinking. Thinking is slow and unreliable.____People like to solve problems, but they do not like to work on problems that cannot be solved. If schoolwork is always just a bit too difficult for a student, it should be no surprise that he doesn't like school much.____

    What is the nature of being human?____ Many people would answer that it is our ability to reason that makes us different—birds can fly, fish can swim, and humans can think . (By thinking I mean solving problems, reasoning, reading something complex, or doing any mental work that requires some effort.)  Shakespeare thought highly of our cognitive(认知) ability in Hamlet: “What a piece of work is man! How noble in reason!” Some three hundred years later, however, Henry Ford came up with a quite different opinion, “Thinking is the hardest work there is, which is the probable reason why so few people are interested in it.” They both had a point of view. Humans are good at certain types of reasoning, especially compared to other animals, but we hardly often exercise those abilities.____Thinking is not only painful, as Ford noted, it's also slow and unreliable.

A. A cognitive scientist would add another point of view, “Humans don't think very often because our brains are designed not for thought but for escaping from thought.”

B. What sets us apart from other species?

C. Of course you could make each decision with care and thought.

D. However, people enjoy thinking if it is successful.

E. Therefore, teachers should reconsider how they encourage their students to think, in order to make thinking enjoyable enough for students to go after.

F. If we are all so bad at thinking, how does anyone get through the day?

G. They want to help their students feel the same excitement and passion for learning that they felt.