This is a guest post by Hugo Kerr who got in touch with the offer that this appear first on the blog. What Hugo refers to as the ‘unconscious mind’ is, I think, largely analogous with my interpretation of long-term memory. There are echoes of Daniel Kahneman’s system 1 and 2 and Jonathan Haidt’s elephant and rider in these ideas. I’m not sure I agree with all his ideas and proposals, but Hugo’s plea that we address ourselves to aligning teaching with the silent, unseen power of our unconscious is certainly worth of consideration. Here follows an introduction to his thoughts and a link to the paper.

We have a very particular view of mind. It is an ancient view, but seems to work and seems self-evident. It’s common sense.

We know the facts (sort of). We know the unconscious exists. We accept that it does stuff. (We can walk and chew gum at the same time.) We know that this unconscious is absolutely and always invisible but then forget that we are prone to forgetting it. We therefore believe that the sparkly bit of our mind is our conscious mind – it’s the only bit we can see. Here is where all the intellectually interesting stuff goes on; here’s where we live and learn; this is who we are.

It’s perfectly obvious, all this, but it’s also perfectly wrong. It’s a basic misapprehension of the nature of mind, and it matters in the classroom.

Research and reason show that the conscious mind is a small, serial, ponderous thing (and always a little late). The unconscious mind, by contrast, is huge, holistic and smart. What consciousness is for (if anything) is unclear. It is, certainly, only a presentation given by our unconscious.

So there we embarrassingly are. The mind we can see is an enigma.  The mind we cannot see is an absolute enigma. Where do we go from here?

We have two very different systems in there. One, the unconscious, silently processes the multitudinous minutiae of life. It assimilates and manages data. ‘We’ (our consciousness) have no idea how this is done and could not, ‘ourselves’ do it. Happily, the unconscious is colossal and competent. Unhappily, for educational purposes, it is also secret. We can’t see it, so we don’t see it, and seeing is, of course, believing.

The other system, consciousness, finds data difficult but enjoys ideas and understandings. It is about meaning. Perhaps meaning is all it is about, or can manage.

Maybe we should consider this issue formally? Maybe this new lens helps? Are we deploying consciousness and unconsciousness optimally? How should we teach detail and when should we not? Does making ‘rules’ explicit help? Are some of our intuitions going to prove defensible after all?

The complete text of Hugo’s article is available here.