Quotes About Learning

Emotionally arousing events tend to be better remembered than neutral events. While

we must do a better job of encouraging lifelong curiosity, in our workplaces, our homes, and especially in our schools.

Truth: The greatest pediatric brain-boosting technology in the world is probably a plain cardboard box, a fresh box of crayons, and two hours. The worst is probably your new flat-screen TV. (See "Hurray for play!" on page 129.)

Essentially, exercise improves a whole host of abilities prized in the classroom and at work.

Brain Rule #6 We don't pay attention to boring things. • The brain's attentional "spotlight" can focus on only one thing at a time: no multitasking. • We are better at seeing patterns and abstracting the meaning of an event than we are at recording detail. • Emotional arousal helps the brain learn. • Audiences check out after 10 minutes, but you can keep grabbing them back by telling narratives or creating events rich in emotion.

Every time I lectured to a group of parents-to-be about baby brain development,

People usually forget 90 percent of what they learn in a class within 30 days. And the majority of this forgetting occurs within the first few hours after class.

les ruego que traten de conocer a sus hijos. Eso significa dedicarles mucho tiempo. La única forma de descubrir qué funciona y qué no funciona es conocer su comportamiento y saber cómo cambia con el tiempo.

We were not sitting in a classroom for eight hours at a stretch. We were not sitting in a cubicle for eight hours at a stretch. If we sat around the Serengeti for eight hours—

One study hints that it could, though more work needs to be done. Kids with normal hearing took an American Sign Language class for nine months, in the first grade, then were administered a series of cognitive tests. Their attentional focus, spatial abilities, memory, and visual discrimination scores improved dramatically—by as much as 50 percent—compared with controls who had no formal instruction.

Executive function is a better predictor of academic success than IQ.

We now know that infants do not gain a more sophisticated vocabulary until their fine-motor finger control improves.

At birth, your baby can distinguish between the sounds of every language that has ever been invented. Professor Patricia Kuhl, co-director of the Institute for Learning and Brain Sciences at the University of Washington, discovered this phenomenon. She calls kids at this age "citizens of the world." Chomsky puts it this way: We are not born with the capacity to speak a specific language. We are born with the capacity to speak any language.

the "compendium of learning" set in motion by the Ming Emperor Yongle (1360–1424), which drew on the talents of more than two thousand scholars and filled more than eleven thousand volumes—and remained the largest encyclopedia in the world until Wikipedia surpassed it in 2007.

Present new material in small steps with sufficient practice after each step. Ask a large number of questions and check the responses of all students. Provide models. Guide student practice. Check for student understanding. Obtain a high success rate. Provide scaffolds for difficult tasks. Require and monitor independent practice.

Inflamed with the study of learning and the admiration of virtue; stirred up with high hopes of living to be brave men and worthy patriots, dear to God, and famous to all ages.

Vain wisdom all, and false philosophy.

Deep vers'd in books and shallow in himself.

The first and wisest of them all professedTo know this only, that he nothing knew.

If you give me enough years and a wise wife, I can eventually start piecing things together. And it helps if that wife pieces them together for me and simply tells me.

He who hasn't hacked assembly language as a youth has no heart. He who does so as an adult has no brain.

There is always time for failure.

In a world that is constantly changing, there is no one subject or set of subjects that will serve you for the foreseeable future, let alone for the rest of your life. The most important skill to acquire now is learning how to learn.

We are drowning in information but starved for knowledge.