Why read The Book of Learning and Forgetting?

Book cover of The Book of Learning and Forgetting

Book description

In this thought-provoking book, Frank Smith explains how schools and educational authorities systematically obstruct the powerful inherent learning abilities of children, creating handicaps that often persist through life. The author eloquently contrasts a false and fabricated "official theory" that learning is work (used to justify the external control of teachers…

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Why read it?

1 author picked The Book of Learning and Forgetting as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

Susan D. Blum

Author

I love this book because Frank Smith, with the forgettable name, dares to point out the unmentionable: students forget almost everything they learn in school, at least the things they learn through coercion. I love the way he takes on all the orthodoxies about the necessity of teachers and schools, and instead shows the absolutely breathtaking learning that happens through connections with others in meaningful contexts.

I love his use of language learning as an exemplar of how learning works, because we anthropologists know so much about how it really occurs, without direct instruction, and through meaningful interaction with others,…

From Susan's list on The best books that shake up conventional views of school.