Is that a problem?

Admittedly, as a Psychologist, I may be biased, but I think it is a huge problem that we do not start teaching Psychology from the early grades. Over the next few posts, I am going to make the case as strongly as I can, but I want to start now by discussing 5 reasons why we need more psychology instruction throughout the school years.

1) Schools love to teach study skills. We want our students to be organized and to learn to study properly. Despite the emphasis on study skills, we do not teach students much if anything about the way their memories work. As a result, any recommendations we make about studying better seem arbitrary, even if they are rooted firmly in psychological research.

2) The bulk of most people's daily behavior is habitual. Thus, it proceeds without requiring conscious awareness. As a result, we are often unaware of which behaviors we perform make us successful or unsuccessful at work or school as well as in our interpersonal relationships. Most people have not been exposed to research on the way habits are formed or the deep role that habits play in our daily life.

3) There is still a stigma attached to mental illness. Even though the causes of many mental illnesses are becoming better understood, many people are ashamed to seek help for mental illness. Even if they themselves understand that mental illnesses have physical causes, they may be concerned that family and friends will not.

4) Business and government talk about innovation as a route to solving economic problems. Businesses thrive on innovative new ideas. Despite significant work in cognitive psychology on the factors that allow people to generate new ideas, we do not teach people about how to maximize their ability to create novel solutions to problems.

5) Most people think of "motivation" as a method for getting people to "try harder." Over the past 40 years, there has been substantial research on motivation that can provide good practical recommendations for how to motivate yourself and others to work effectively and to get along better.

On top of all that, Psychology is fun. (Ok, I'm clearly biased here. But it is.)

My main point is that we must start giving Psychology a place in our schools from the earliest grades. We need to create a higher level of psychological literacy in our population.

In general, we tend to think about psychology and psychologists only when something goes wrong. We seek the help of psychology to help us fix bad relationships or broken patterns of behavior. We look to psychologists for help with learning disabilities and developmental delays. That is important, of course, but a firm grasp of Psychology will also help make daily life better by making people better decision makers, better motivators, and better reasoners.