Citing David Geary's An Evolutionarily Informed Education Science (see also this overview of teleological biology, Paul Kirschner and Mirjam Neelen argue that while "children are naturally motivated to learn through play, experimentation, and discovery" this might not be appropriate for "cultural or biologically secondary knowledge" - that is, the knowledge we teach in schools. "It would be wonderful if we could acquire biologically secondary knowledge with the same ease, but unfortunately that's not so. For example, skills such as reading, spelling, writing, doing maths, etcetera, take conscious effort and involve the limits of our working memory." I don't think there's any actual evidence to be found in evolution (or through the misuse of terms like 'folk psychology') to support the idea that there are these two distinct types of knowledge (the first of which would be positively Lamarckian), but there you have it. Image: Ashman's Taxonomy.
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