We All Like to Learn — Why Don’t We Like Learning for School?
Learning can be fun or frustrating. What makes the difference?
At our dinner table, we have a game. I say, for example, “It’s in spoon, but not fork.” The next person continues it: “It’s in pepper, but not salt.” And the next: “It’s in Halloween, but not Christmas.” And so on!
When someone new joins us, we play this game and see if they can catch the rule. They throw out guesses: “It’s in dog, but not cat? It’s in ocean, but not lake? It’s in Valentine’s Day, but not February?” “Nope, nope, nope!” After getting it wrong too many times, not knowing why, it feels frustrating: “Oh man, not this game again!” But once they understand the rule*, that’s when the real fun begins.
Often, even when we sincerely say we “want” to learn a subject, putting in the mental work feels like a chore. Meanwhile, we can spend hours eagerly diving into information we know is useless to us. Like this dinner game, learning can be either frustrating or fun — what makes the difference?
It’s not that some people just like to learn, and some people don’t. Everyone who claims to hate education has known the joy of feeling their mind expand, the thrill of getting their curiosity satisfied. That’s part of being human!
What matters for a learning experience is the expected mental payoff.
If something’s so familiar that it doesn’t even get your brain to update anything, it’s boring. That’s what school feels like to, say, an avid reader sitting in a first-grade lesson about punctuation basics, thinking all these rules seem obvious to him.
If something’s so far unconnected from anything you know, to the point that there’s nothing in your brain it can update, it’s boring. I may know Zheng He’s voyages lasted from 1405 to 1433, but so what? They could have been from 1205 to 1233, for all I care. With what little I understand about Chinese history, my timeline isn’t really shaped either way.
And if something’s so difficult that it seems like no amount of thinking is going to pay off soon, it’s boring. “Complete these math problems” — but where do I even start? How do I get to the answer? “Write an essay” — but even if I do my best, you’re going to tell me it sucks like you do every time! When struggling students are frustrated with school, it’s often because it feels like they weren’t told the rule to the dinner game.
But when you’re sure you might think your way into succeeding, that’s the sweet spot. When you can feel your mental maps updating, feel confusing concepts start to make sense, feel like you’ve successfully solved a problem, you’re rewarded with a burst of dopamine that keeps your brain engaged.
So someone who doesn’t understand this dinner game can think and think about what makes some words in and what makes some words out, but if nothing works, it feels like there’s no point in playing. Aimlessly picking a pair of words and hearing “no” isn’t very exciting.
When you know the rule, though, your mind is active in a different way: you think of a word and search for a word that’s thematically similar to it so that one is in and one is out, shooting down options that come to mind until you find the right one. You don’t have to focus all your energy into guessing what the rule is, so you can now focus on fitting this rule in a way that’s new and interesting — thinking pays off! The topic of the game didn’t change. All that changed was the expected mental payoff.
Compare that to common school experiences. Learning a new abstract math formula may feel pointless, but when you’re given a problem you know you can solve now, you know it paid off. A vague “write an essay” task is daunting, but when you know exactly what you want to write and how you’re going to organize it, all you have to do is put the right words on paper; you can get past the worries and get into a state of flow, finishing with a product you can feel proud of.
When you no longer have to wonder how to do something, you can dedicate your mental energy to doing it right — and it’s rewarding to know you did!
We run on short-term gratification. Something doesn’t need to “apply” to your life or be “relevant” to your long-term interests to hook you. All you need is that in-the-moment feeling that you’re succeeding at something not too easy.
School might make you forget this, but the truth is, you do love to learn. It’s just hard to feel that way when you don’t get the pleasure of success.
*The rule? Words with doubled letters are in.
Ideas adapted from Why Don’t Students Like School? by Daniel Willingham.
