W hy Don’t Students Like
School? began as a list of
nine principles that are so
fundamental to the mind’s operation
that they are as true in the classroom as
they are in the laboratory, and therefore
can reliably be applied to classroom
situations. Many of these
principles likely won’t surprise you:
factual knowledge is important,
practice is necessary, and so on. What
may surprise you are the implications
for teaching that follow. You’ll discover
that authors routinely write only a
fraction of what they mean, which I’ll
argue implies very little for reading
instruction, but a great deal for the
factual knowledge that your students
must gain. You’ll explore why you
remember the plot of Star Wars
without even trying, and you’ll learn
how to harness that ease of learning for