Big surprise!

Hello Jean. I heard you're still obsessed with brains.

You could say that. I'm a cognitive scientist,

which is a fancy way of saying I research how human beings learn.

Wow, that's what I do.

What?!

Well, kind of. i'm a... i'm a teacher.

You?! A teacher?!

No offense, but didn't you drop out?

Yeah, best thing I ever did.

Ok... explain yourself

Come on... you remember school: boring as hell.

I dropped out because I didn't want to waste my time on stuff that meant nothing to me.

I had bigger fish to fry. Me? I was gonna get out there and be free,

do what I wanted to do.

Which was?

Oh... you know... stuff.

I see... and how long did you do... stuff?

Oh, god, I'd have done it forever.

I probably still be sat on my back side right now if I hadn't been for my grandad.

Your grandad...

Yeah, one day i'm just sitting around doing stuff...

...and all of a sudden there is...

...just standing outside the house with the beat up old Harley, and he says:

"Fix the chopped and get it working by your 16th birthday and i'll give it to you and pay your insurance...

...and all i'm giving you to do it is this manual".

Wow... so what did you do?

What you think I did? I got to work.

I read the manual, got my dad's tools out,

I've got the local mechanic to teach me stuff,

I went to the library, got books out on engines,

and finally understood some of what the cardigans our school were going on about.

And I wrote friends in to help with promises of free rides when it was done.

You see, I love that! It's what we scientists called being in the flow.

All the research shows we just don't learn something unless we are emotionally engage with it .

Here you are: a 15 years old getting a real challenge,

and you're rising to it because it's something that matters to you.

All I cared about was getting that bike running by my 16th birthday.

Hahaha, did you make it?

Huh! That's one birthday i'll never forget.

That day I was Easy Rider.

But more than that, in giving me the bike my grandad rekindled my passion for learning.

My 16th birthday is the day I became truly free.

That is wonderful, so what did you do next?

Oh, I go back to school, go to college, get qualified and now I'm a teacher.

wait... i just don't get it.

Why become a teacher when you hate school so much?

Because I hated school so much.

You see, the classes I teach aren't like the classes we had in school.

Oh... why not?

In my classes the kids learn in a way that's meaningful for them.

You know Confucius got the measure of this two and a half thousand years ago.

He said: "Tell me and I forget,

show me and I remember,

let me do and I understand".

Huh, that's exactly it.

So Confucius knew about it all that time ago and you scientists have known about it for... how long?

Ah, 25 years.

Right... so if that's the case why most kids still being taught in a way that's so boring for them?

Now that's a question I'd love to know the answer to.

So maybe we just have to, you know, keep trying to spread the word.

Yeah, I wish somebody just record our conversation...

...so we could put it on the internet or something.

Now wouldn't have be something.