Cognition and Reality: Principles and Implications of Cognitive Psychology by Ulric Neisser (W.H. Freeman, 1976).
Cognition and Reality is a classic in the field of psychology, and it’s also one of my favorite books. Neisser recognized that when researchers give students activities to do in a laboratory setting, their thinking and problem solving are very different from the thinking and problem solving they do in school and everyday life. So, it’s possible to teach children to think in ways that are useful in the lab or on standardized tests but that are not useful in the rest of their lives. Neisser’s point was bold and important in the 1970s, and it remains important today: We too often judge students’ abilities and achievements by their grades in school and their standardized test scores. But the most urgent challenges we face — e.g., global climate change, pandemics, increasing income disparities, pollution, and the propagation of false information — require us to solve messy, complex problems that are nothing like the well-structured, multiple-choice items students encounter on standardized tests. Children need to learn how to solve real problems, not just the artificial, test-like ones we’ve been using to measure their aptitude and achievement.
Robert J. Sternberg’s recent Kappan articles:
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Robert J. Sternberg
ROBERT J. STERNBERG is a professor of human development in the College of Human Ecology, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY. He is the author of Adaptive Intelligence .
