1712 Teaching Minds

1712 Teaching Minds actions. What kinds of predictions do children regularly make, then? And, what can we teach and how can they learn? 1. Children predict the actions of the people that they interact with, but they do not necessarily realize that they do this. 2, Children predict the reactions of objects and actions in the physical world, but they do not necessarily realize that they do this either. 3. Children predict their own feelings and mental states. They do things that they think will make them happy, but they don’t necessarily realize that they do this either. These three worlds, the social, the physical, and the mental, are at the center of what adults make predictions about. We predict the speed of an oncoming car and decide whether we can cross the street safely. Children may not do this so well. We predict what will happen when we scream and yell at someone, but children may not predict this too well either. We predict events that will make us happy or sad, such as taking a nice vacation, or playing a game, or a good meal, or establish- ing a relationship with another person. Children do not consciously think about such things. But adults do think about these things, so where do children learn about them? At the present time, the answer is that they learn about them as events happen randomly in their lives. If they are lucky enough to have someone helpful to talk with about their experiences, they may, in fact, become good at analyzing how the world works and making their predictions conscious. Getting better at prediction is the cornerstone of living one’s life in a satisfying way. One can, of course, get better at prediction by simply thinking about it—this is how most people do that today, of course. But not everyone is capable of doing that and, clearly, most adults are not all that good at mak- ing important predictions in their own lives. (This is one reason that there are bad marriages, financial counselors, clinical psychologists, and prisons.) What helps teach one to predict is to hear about the experience of others and to be able to reflect on one’s own experience. This means that having experiences to reflect upon, and people who are knowl- edgeable to discuss those experiences with, is at the cornerstone of learning to predict effectively. HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_023858