Much ado

The brain will assess its environment.  If it is hostile, it will determine whether to stay and ward off the danger, thereby learning something, or retreat to fight another day.  In education, the environment is called socialization.  But, that is a cover term for allowing a lot of sorting to happen in order to find a pecking order.  That kind of sorting teaches a student that a day of reckoning will happen sometime during the school year when her or his order will be decided.  Much of the time a person will not like the sorting process or the order that is decided for them.  The environment then begins to grow shields and spears and limits learning severely.

Also, the brain will assess the learning environment for its value in determining future success.  It will override the impulses for flight or fight if it thinks the long-term result is worth the fight or the retreat.  But too many times, there is no information worthy of subject matter matching future needs for survival, thus no relevance.  Then, the environment is deemed hostile since it is of no use.

Bill Daggett has been harping on the importance of relevance in the curriculum for years.  People have ignored him.  But, the evidence is written on every senior's transcript because the ability to communicate in numbers is very, very low and the ability to communicate substance meaningfully with words using any format has diminished.  Following Daggett's ideas for relevance would certainly help.   A student will certainly learn more if two things exist.  1) ensuring that the learning is clearly linked to future success, and 2) ensuring that the environment does not make one feel that fighting or fleeing is necessary.  Otherwise, 12 years of education is much ado about nothing.