--- product_id: 1694664 title: "Why Don't Students Like School?" price: "€ 8.80" currency: EUR in_stock: false reviews_count: 13 url: https://www.desertcart.be/products/1694664-why-dont-students-like-school store_origin: BE region: Belgium --- # Why Don't Students Like School? **Price:** € 8.80 **Availability:** ❌ Out of Stock ## Quick Answers - **What is this?** Why Don't Students Like School? - **How much does it cost?** € 8.80 with free shipping - **Is it available?** Currently out of stock - **Where can I buy it?** [www.desertcart.be](https://www.desertcart.be/products/1694664-why-dont-students-like-school) ## Best For - Customers looking for quality international products ## Why This Product - Free international shipping included - Worldwide delivery with tracking - 15-day hassle-free returns ## Description Easy-to-apply, scientifically-based approaches for engaging students in the classroom Cognitive scientist Dan Willingham focuses his acclaimed research on the biological and cognitive basis of learning. His book will help teachers improve their practice by explaining how they and their students think and learn. It reveals-the importance of story, emotion, memory, context, and routine in building knowledge and creating lasting learning experiences. Nine, easy-to-understand principles with clear applications for the classroom Includes surprising findings, such as that intelligence is malleable, and that you cannot develop "thinking skills" without facts How an understanding of the brain's workings can help teachers hone their teaching skills "Mr. Willingham's answers apply just as well outside the classroom. Corporate trainers, marketers and, not least, parents -anyone who cares about how we learn-should find his book valuable reading." ―Wall Street Journal Review: A book of pedagogy, but much, much more than that - This is a very suggestive book which chiefly deals with pedagogy. It focuses upon nine aspects of the learning process and offers corollaries for the instructor to consider. For example, one of the principles is that children are more alike than different in terms of learning. The corollary: knowledge of students' learning styles should not preoccupy the teacher. Most important classroom implication: focus on lesson content, not student differences, when you are deciding how to teach. The book is more than that, however. It offers a basic model of the workings of the human mind, based on up-to-date cognitive science. The presentation is straightforward and lucid. Willingham sketches a basic outline with three boxes--the environment (which impinges on consciousness), operational memory which conjures with the environment and draws on (the third box) long-term memory. Operational memory is limited. While the brain's awareness of its surroundings is very impressive (hence, robots cannot drive trucks) it is lazy and does not like abstract thought. It relies on memory, goes to memory first when it faces a problem and tries to short-circuit the ratiocinative process by finding prior examples, prior models, prior methods. The operational memory likes to `chunk', to see collocations of material rather than individual items. It searches for patterns and likes mnemonic devices. Bottom line: the more you know the more easy it is to learn. This bears directly on E. D. Hirsch's (Willingham's Virginia colleague) notions of cultural literacy. What do we need to teach? What do we need to know? Whatever writers leave out, i.e., whatever they take for granted, whatever they assume that an intelligent, aware reader should already know. (For technical, professional learning, we should teach key concepts, issues and problems, the lore that professionals in a field can be expected to already know.) Willingham explores such traditional issues as nature/nurture, grill/drill Gradgrindism and, fundamentally, what works. He demonstrates why children need to know facts, why they like facts and how facts enable them to understand and analyze. He considers `degree of difficulty' (in the classroom and beyond), arguing that the brain likes puzzles and challenges, but not ones that are too easy or too difficult. This is a fascinating book, particularly in its exploration of the importance of memory (I think I understand Plato and Wordsworth much better as a result) and the nature of puzzles (I think I understand the attractiveness of genre fiction to a greater degree now). While it is basically a book of pedagogy it is much, much more than that. Highly recommended. Review: Exceptionally Solid, Useful -- and Content-Rich - An engaging, accessible, judicious, evidence-based book which distills nine of the most widely supported findings from cognitive science that are likely to deliver the greatest positive impact in the classroom and beyond. The book would be a solid, four-staff effort in any field. It earns its fifth star because of its distinctive value and positioning among works on improving teaching. There are books for teachers on teaching that display and can generate more passion, but none of them are better-disciplined by the evidence. There are books with more evidence and nuance (including Willingham's other work), but none are more accessible to non-specialists. There are better introductions to cognitive science, but none aimed more squarely at teaching and teachers. Finally, it is content-rich compared to almost everything in the field: a total of nine significantly different but complementary ideas is about eight more than one finds in most books on improving teaching, especially those that are equally accessible. I first read this book in preparation for a multi-year professional development project in a technical college in an emerging economy. It became immediately the "go-to" resource for that effort at changing teachers' ways of thinking about themselves and their work. I'm not sure where the few negative reviews come from: I've never recommended the book to a teacher or anyone else who hasn't found it enjoyable and valuable. Perhaps it is because, while the book offers concrete suggestions for converting its insights into practice, it doesn't give the reader cookie-cutter instructions, You still need to reflect seriously about what you're trying to accomplish and how to harness what you've learned, though Willingham does provide enough help to enable even a novice teacher to get going. (And it's a great choice as a text/conversation-starter for group-based professional development activities, in my experience.) To me, the balance of respect and support for the reader/teacher is one of the book's major strengths. ## Technical Specifications | Specification | Value | |---------------|-------| | Best Sellers Rank | #260,385 in Books ( See Top 100 in Books ) #71 in College & University Student Life (Books) #89 in Education Research (Books) #135 in Educational Psychology (Books) | | Customer Reviews | 4.6 out of 5 stars 1,128 Reviews | ## Images ![Why Don't Students Like School? - Image 1](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/61brevqGc6L.jpg) ## Customer Reviews ### ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ A book of pedagogy, but much, much more than that *by R***Z on April 17, 2011* This is a very suggestive book which chiefly deals with pedagogy. It focuses upon nine aspects of the learning process and offers corollaries for the instructor to consider. For example, one of the principles is that children are more alike than different in terms of learning. The corollary: knowledge of students' learning styles should not preoccupy the teacher. Most important classroom implication: focus on lesson content, not student differences, when you are deciding how to teach. The book is more than that, however. It offers a basic model of the workings of the human mind, based on up-to-date cognitive science. The presentation is straightforward and lucid. Willingham sketches a basic outline with three boxes--the environment (which impinges on consciousness), operational memory which conjures with the environment and draws on (the third box) long-term memory. Operational memory is limited. While the brain's awareness of its surroundings is very impressive (hence, robots cannot drive trucks) it is lazy and does not like abstract thought. It relies on memory, goes to memory first when it faces a problem and tries to short-circuit the ratiocinative process by finding prior examples, prior models, prior methods. The operational memory likes to `chunk', to see collocations of material rather than individual items. It searches for patterns and likes mnemonic devices. Bottom line: the more you know the more easy it is to learn. This bears directly on E. D. Hirsch's (Willingham's Virginia colleague) notions of cultural literacy. What do we need to teach? What do we need to know? Whatever writers leave out, i.e., whatever they take for granted, whatever they assume that an intelligent, aware reader should already know. (For technical, professional learning, we should teach key concepts, issues and problems, the lore that professionals in a field can be expected to already know.) Willingham explores such traditional issues as nature/nurture, grill/drill Gradgrindism and, fundamentally, what works. He demonstrates why children need to know facts, why they like facts and how facts enable them to understand and analyze. He considers `degree of difficulty' (in the classroom and beyond), arguing that the brain likes puzzles and challenges, but not ones that are too easy or too difficult. This is a fascinating book, particularly in its exploration of the importance of memory (I think I understand Plato and Wordsworth much better as a result) and the nature of puzzles (I think I understand the attractiveness of genre fiction to a greater degree now). While it is basically a book of pedagogy it is much, much more than that. Highly recommended. ### ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Exceptionally Solid, Useful -- and Content-Rich *by C***J on August 24, 2015* An engaging, accessible, judicious, evidence-based book which distills nine of the most widely supported findings from cognitive science that are likely to deliver the greatest positive impact in the classroom and beyond. The book would be a solid, four-staff effort in any field. It earns its fifth star because of its distinctive value and positioning among works on improving teaching. There are books for teachers on teaching that display and can generate more passion, but none of them are better-disciplined by the evidence. There are books with more evidence and nuance (including Willingham's other work), but none are more accessible to non-specialists. There are better introductions to cognitive science, but none aimed more squarely at teaching and teachers. Finally, it is content-rich compared to almost everything in the field: a total of nine significantly different but complementary ideas is about eight more than one finds in most books on improving teaching, especially those that are equally accessible. I first read this book in preparation for a multi-year professional development project in a technical college in an emerging economy. It became immediately the "go-to" resource for that effort at changing teachers' ways of thinking about themselves and their work. I'm not sure where the few negative reviews come from: I've never recommended the book to a teacher or anyone else who hasn't found it enjoyable and valuable. Perhaps it is because, while the book offers concrete suggestions for converting its insights into practice, it doesn't give the reader cookie-cutter instructions, You still need to reflect seriously about what you're trying to accomplish and how to harness what you've learned, though Willingham does provide enough help to enable even a novice teacher to get going. (And it's a great choice as a text/conversation-starter for group-based professional development activities, in my experience.) To me, the balance of respect and support for the reader/teacher is one of the book's major strengths. ### ⭐⭐⭐⭐ Great resource for educators *by S***R on November 8, 2012* In his time of getting an undergrad at my RDU area neighbor Duke University, a PhD at my not affiliated whatsoever (but much superior to my undergrad and grad schools) far to the north neighbor Harvard University, and a teaching position at the University of Virginia, author Daniel T. Willingham has put together a healthy collection of cognitive psychology books based on education. Being a fan of both the worlds of education and brain science (maybe to solve the mystery of what happened to all that information I put in during decades of education), I thought it was a good idea when the professional development class I took over this summer required us to read Willingham's book Why Don't Students Like School? I realize the question that title poses seems strangely enough both convoluted and pretty obvious. But it turns out... it's just convoluted. Why Don't Students Like School? gives some great insight for teachers; insight that often seems completely unintuitive until you read through the research based explanations Willingham gives. This title is a little misleading, though, without the very sub-subtitle (one that looks more like credits than a title) A Cognitive Scientist Answers Questions about how the Mind Works and What it Means for the Classroom. It's packed with information that can't be piled into one representative main topic (besides maybe just... education), but one of the most talked about topics was that, regardless of what most education books of the day will tell you, there are two tools of pedagogy that work better than anything else to build competent students with the best ability to take in and truly understand new knowledge: factual learning and practice... (i.e. memorizing dates in history, formulas in math, and practicing until and after we've got it all down). Huh? Isn't that exactly what we've been doing for time immemorial and are now leaving? Yes. What about teaching test taking strategies and research strategies so students can do well on state-mandated tests? Sad answer to this is, it might help them a little on these tests, but it hurts them in their memorization and application skills later in life... It's like cramming; it does work if all you're looking for that information to do is give you a passing grade on a test. Willingham and others' research has said that in order to build analysis skills that will last (which is virtually all students learn in school today... at least the temporary kind) they need the background information that we are presently too busy to teach them. The education debate between teaching more subject content or more learning strategies has already been won - by learning strategies (it even has a more politically correct name), but this research is saying, wait, we're teaching them so they can have better lives, right? Not just so our school system can have more 4/4's on the End of Grade Test than the next... I'm not going to say the whole book was great, cover to cover. Probably a third of it was a really good read and the rest was stuff many of us (certainly teachers) have heard or read in school (college and job) many times. By the way, while it's a comparatively small topic in the book, he does give a reason for the main title being what it is. Our brains don't like to learn. We spend a third of our brains' energy consumption on vision alone, and they do whatever they can to stop from using more for thought. They do so by supplementing a lot of that thought with memory, hence the reason why we need to get information into memory. Then, we can use our full amount of working-memory (or thinking) to figure out what we don't know. I think this came out as less of a review of Willingham's book and more of a pedagogical rant backed up by his research. Either way, I enjoyed it. --- ## Why Shop on Desertcart? - 🛒 **Trusted by 1.3+ Million Shoppers** — Serving international shoppers since 2016 - 🌍 **Shop Globally** — Access 737+ million products across 21 categories - 💰 **No Hidden Fees** — All customs, duties, and taxes included in the price - 🔄 **15-Day Free Returns** — Hassle-free returns (30 days for PRO members) - 🔒 **Secure Payments** — Trusted payment options with buyer protection - ⭐ **TrustPilot Rated 4.5/5** — Based on 8,000+ happy customer reviews **Shop now:** [https://www.desertcart.be/products/1694664-why-dont-students-like-school](https://www.desertcart.be/products/1694664-why-dont-students-like-school) --- *Product available on Desertcart Belgium* *Store origin: BE* *Last updated: 2026-05-25*