Books like The Book of Learning and Forgetting — picked by fans

I love this book for two reasons: First, Nathan showed (me) how to turn an anthropological eye on our everyday context, revealing its strangeness. And second, my students love this book, which might be all the recommendation you need to hear! 

Anthropologists often go “to the field,” but what if “the field” is your actual place of work? And what if that place of work is basically a “total institution,” in Goffman's sense? Then you have to live there. Nathan's year living in dorms and taking classes was modeled on traditional fieldwork, but it's ethically and even logistically complicated in different ways.

As I reread this book every few years, I am reminded that even though I interact with students all the time, there is much about their lives that remains out of reach for me. It's a reminder, all the time, that students are fully embodied, social, emotional… show more.

I love this book because Ivan Illich pulls no punches. I love the way he clearly points out how intertwined schools are with the nature of society, in a feedback loop of influence. Our very souls may be wounded by these structures, even when they are established with good intentions.

This “radical” book gave me permission to understand that I could connect the ecological and pedagogical, the theological and the social, the economic and the affective. Our nature permits endless noncoerced learning, but schools pervert that. Even though I understand how this message can be twisted for purposes of privatization and control, I love the idealism and humanism at its core.

This book changed my life. It answered my questions about why students so often didn’t like school despite so many efforts to force them to! (Yeah, it sounds dumb to me too, now.) 

Since reading this book, I've completely changed the way I teach. Inspired by these insights, I have written several books. I've become courageous about being like Alfie, who is an engaging writer, completely fearless, and committed to human well-being and all the ways our institutions, including schools, contribute to or undermine the best of our spirit—individual and collective.

Even when people in authority challenge me, I am inspired to speak the detailed truth, so much of it learned from this book! (It also has many well-digested sources.)

I love this book because I learn something new each time I open it. And I've opened it hundreds of times.

I love the boundless information here about how human societies, across time and space, have created concepts of the child and childhood, which always intertwine with ideas and practices about learning. Almost nowhere has it ever looked like the familiar-to-us “WEIRD” (Western, Educated, Industrial, Rich, Democratic) societies that are usually used to represent “human nature.” In fact, each time I read anything in this book, our own social and cultural practices look stranger and stranger.

This book gives me ideas about the struggles we often have to nurture children and students in our familiar ways—and that's because we are fighting all the natural tendencies of involvement, autonomy, and competence that guide most learning everywhere.

Alright, alright. There should be at least one book that actually helps with the practice of teaching. And this is the one. Countless books admonish specific programs and practices, chock full of the fanciest edu-buzz words. But rarely do they discuss why a strategy works based on the science of human cognition and development. Even less frequently do they back the why with multiple peer-reviewed studies. 

Jensen and McConchie combine an absurd level of nerd as researchers and veteran educators. This book and its predecessors helped me gain a deep understanding of why a strategy worked (or how to make it work), whether it was something new or something tried-and-true. The job of a teacher is to mold human brains. We should probably know everything we can about how those brains work.

It’s impossible, as a parent, not to marvel at the miracle of learning that occurs in very young children. Indeed, parents have experienced this sense of awe for time immemorial, and some have gone so far as to venture explanations for how it works. John Dewey, the American philosopher and psychologist, argued at the dawn of the twentieth century that children are like young scientists as they go about their day, subtly testing the things and people around them to see how they work. We now know, in no small part due to the work of researchers including The Scientist in the Crib author Alison Gopnik, that Dewey was right. Children are compelled to experiment; what’s more, they make the most of the limited data they produce with a powerful logic invisible to the untrained eye. Parents—but also anyone with a sense of wonder—will find answers to deep mysteries in… show more.

The author’s enthusiasm and expertise shine through this book and make it an enjoyable read, especially if you are interested in learning as a capability in human beings and organizations like we are!

I, AK, think that she has managed to make a complex topic engaging, and I felt inspired by her practical ideas for how to nurture a learning mindset in an age of artificial intelligence and technological advancement.

I think it’s a well-researched book with many great examples from real life on the topic of building a sustainable learning environment and continuous improvement in both individuals and corporate settings.

When I met Jerry Bruner in the summer of 1965, I had expected to become a clinical psychologist or perhaps a psychoanalyst. However, the chance to work as a research assistant for Bruner as he was developing a social studies curriculum for middle schools was transformative: I decided to become a cognitively oriented developmental psychologist with a focus on the arts.

Both the ideas that Bruner introduced me to and the way in which he interweaved the humanities and social sciences in his writings are never far from my literary consciousness. I am glad that my children had a chance to attend schools where Bruner’s ideas were taken seriously.

I love Y IS FOR YET for its vivid illustrations and the easy, matter-of-fact way it depicts children exhibiting a growth mindset. This book allows EVERY child to see themselves on the pages. The format also makes it simple for adults to encourage a growth mindset in their everyday lives.

Harvard-educated cognitive scientist Daniel Willingham is one of the foremost experts in educational psychology. While the title of this book may not sound so appealing, it’s really a tight summary of some of the most important principles of psychology to learning more effectively. Willingham’s blog and other books are also excellent resources for someone who wants to understand how to learn well.