The Book of Learning and Forgetting

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 and students through excessive regulation and massive testing) with a correct but officially suppressed "classic view" that learning is a social process that can occur naturally and continually through collaborative activities. This book will be crucial reading in a time when national authorities continue to blame teachers and students for alleged failures in education. It will help educators and parents to combat sterile attitudes toward teaching and learning and prevent current practices from doing further harm.

I wouldn't call this a good book, per se, but like all moderately thoughtful reflections on education, it puts forward enough interesting ideas to help you refine your own thoughts on the subject.

Smith spends most of the book convincing us of two notions. First of all, he says that real learning is what you do when you are interested in a topic and actively engaged in doing it. For example, forcing yourself to memorize a verb conjugation is not real, permanent learning, whereas getting used to the way a verb is conjugated in practice will stick with you forever. Secondly, he says that the way schools operate nowadays, with testing and coercion, is completely antithetical to this type of real learning.

I believe the main premise of the book is solid. As a teacher, I begin all of my lessons by giving my students a task I think they will want to perform (i.e. an interesting puzzle or a practical problem), and I try to make most of the lesson about the students actively engaging themselves in performing the task. It is the closest I can come in the classroom to simulating the kind of learning you do when you throw yourself into an interesting hobby and learn all the tricks through practice.

However, like most moderately thoughtful reflections on education, the book falls down when it tries to prescribe how its ideas might be applied to schools. Because Smith does not believe he has a "theory" (theories are treated like dogmas once people sign onto them, and he doesn't like that -- I agree) he does not really have a clear picture in his mind of how a school might operate once it is "liberated" from the bane of testing and all the other trappings of modern education. There will be collaboration between classmates and teachers and mixing of students on different skill levels, but most of the practical objections to these ideas are waved away as if they were nothing. On a slightly infuriating note, the one objection that does get tons of attention is that some teachers might not like to go along with Smith's philosophy. Smith advises parents of students to go over the heads of teachers who cling to testing, etc. -- go and complain to their bosses about them. That is just what we need to promote an open and intelligent dialogue in schools. Sheesh.

I would love to bring into my classroom more of the authentic experience of learning a subject because the subject is interesting, and I know I am headed in that direction. All this book did was tweak a few of my thoughts and make it clear to me just how hard it is to talk about the art of teaching well. It seemed to me after reading this book that students would be better off staying home from school and reading some good books with their families.

My book never showed up, so beware! Luckily I was only out about 11.00, but I certainly wouldn't recommend any further business.

Too often in education we get the standard viewpoint of the traditional education system. Whether you agree or disagree with the traditional approach, it is good to read an alternative viewpoint. There is plenty in this book to make you rethink the way you teach.

This is a great book that challenges everything we know in our educational system. A must read for educators and teachers to open the eyes to how we all learn.

This book is a must read. The book offers a more philosophical, theoretical perspective on learning, contrary to mainstream, contemporary educational thought and practice.