Adapted Minds and Evolved Schools

Abstract

Evolutionary psychology raises questions about how cognitive adaptations might be related to the emergence of formal schooling. Is there a special role for natural domains of cognition such as folk physics, folk psychology and folk biology? These domains may vary from small fragments of reasoning to large integrated systems. This heterogeneity complicates claims about abilities to inhibit folk sciences and about how formal education exploits such inhibitory abilities. Moreover, formal education often needs to build on intuitive knowledge systems rather than inhibit them. Education must also reduce complex information to the right level of granularity and help students appreciate the limits of their understanding. This involves learning how to outsource understanding to other minds and to read intentions. Geary (2008) provides an important focus on these issues by suggesting that educational and evolutionary psychologists ask how the patterns found in each field might inform the other.