Thinking Is Hard-How To Help Your Child Think
Originally Published on Jump Into Genius
“Thinking is the hardest work there is, which is the probable reason why so few people engage in it.” — Henry Ford
The first cognitive principal Daniel T. Willingham dives into in his book Why Students Don’t Like School is that while curiosity is natural, thinking is hard. Let’s unpack this principal, which is supported by a large amount of data and has been shown to have a huge impact on student learning, as that is the criteria Willingham demanded for a principal to get into his book.
Your brain does a ton of stuff, all the time, thinking is not the thing it does the best. Our brain helps us see and move, smell and hear, these things it does much more efficiently and reliably than it thinks. Your brain needs to devote a lot of space to these important functions. “Seeing is actually more difficult than playing chess or solving calculus problems”(Willingham) But it doesn’t feed more difficult, because our brain is better at it.
Thinking is inefficient for three reasons; it is slow, effortful, and uncertain. How fast can you take in a huge scene of visual stimuli? How fast can you solve a Sudoku, can you just glance at it and know where the numbers go? The glance tells you only what it is, a Sudoku, to solve the puzzle you will have to reach past your visual system and engage in…
