What If You Were Never Bad at Learning? | Asher Kure, Part 1

This season of Change Narratives looks at the social units that shape people: families, communities, institutions, environments and experiences. Education is one of the biggest. For many of us, school is where we first start deciding whether we are smart, slow, academic, creative or simply “not good at learning.” But what happens when those conclusions are wrong? In Part 1 of our conversation with researcher, educator and author Asher Kure, we explore the experiences that made him question some of our most familiar assumptions about intelligence and learning. Asher tells the story of a student who struggled badly in class, but outside school could play a sophisticated PlayStation game so well that his older brother struggled to beat him. The child could clearly learn. So what was really going on? From that question, we get into learning habits, behaviour, memory, the methods high-performing learners use and the classroom experiment that helped students learn from their peers. We also talk about Mind Palaces, memory triggers and why Asher believes learning itself should sit at the centre of education. This conversation is not only about how people learn. It is about how an institution like school can shape what people believe about themselves long after they leave the classroom. What if you were never bad at learning?