Welcome to Econ Talk, part of the Library of Economics and Liberty. I'm your host Russ Roberts

of George Mason University and Stanford University's Hoover Institution. Our website is econtalk.org

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Today is October 6, 2009, and my guest is Daniel Willingham, Professor of Psychology at the

University of Virginia and the author of Why Don't Students Like School. Dan, welcome to

Econ Talk. Thank you so much. Glad to be here.

The title of your book is a little misleading. It is about why students don't like school,

but it's also of interest to anyone who wants to understand how our brains process information,

how we think, everything from the basic facts that we absorb to abstract reasoning. And

it's made me think a lot as a teacher and, of course, as a student, which I hope I

still am. You start with the claim that thinking is hard and the brain tries not to do it.

Right.

What I mean is that we normally think of humans as being terrific at thinking. And we sort

of think of ourselves as the pinnacle of creation exactly because we're so good at abstract

thought. And when you compare our abilities to other animals, there's no doubt we're

very good at abstract thought. What I mean by we're not very good at thinking is when

you compare thinking abstract reasoning high-level thought dealing with novel problems. When

you compare the mental processes that are involved in those tasks to other mental processes

that are mined in brain handle, those high-level processes are actually not all that effective.

So I'm thinking about vision, for example. Vision is unbelievably reliable. When you

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