Barbara Oakley Thinks We Can. If We Change How
What if the age of artificial intelligence required us not to reinvent learning, but to finally understand how it truly works? That question framed Barbara Oakley’s lecture at the Universidad de Las Hespérides, where we explored how neuroscience can reshape education in a world of large language models.
Drawing from that premise, she explained the two major learning pathways of the brain: the slow, conscious declarative system and the fast, automatic basal-ganglia system. Both matter, she insisted, and modern education often misunderstands their roles. Even everyday habits reveal this: simply having a phone on the table, she said, “reduces your IQ in some sense. It makes you dumber,” and typing on a keyboard often prevents genuine processing—“you’re not thinking… you’re not cognitively internalizing whatever you are learning.”
Oakley also warned that widely adopted pedagogical ideas can drift away from evidence. She mentioned, for instance, a professor who banned laptops for note taking and phones and found not only improved performance but students were “a lot happier with the class.” And she stressed the importance of internal knowledge in the age of AI. Her refrain—inviting the audience to say it aloud—captured the heart of her message:
“AI shows, but I’m the only one who knows.”
During the Q&A, questions touched on assessment, assignment design and the challenges faced by neurodivergent students. Oakley emphasized that learning will not be replaced by generative systems: practice, repetition and guided instruction remain essential.