ABSTRACT
In 1979, Lochhead and Clement edited a volume on Cognitive Process Instruction and began their preface with the following quotation from a college student: “They should have a course to teach you how to learn … all they have is courses on what to learn” (p. iii). Lochhead and Clement went on to explain that their volume represented the thinking of people who were” … reawakening the 19th century belief that education can improve the functioning of the mind through training, and that the role of the University is not just to pass on information …” (p. iii). They argued that a major function of universities—and presumably of all forms of schooling—is to help students improve their abilities to learn productively and think more clearly (see also Derry, this volume). As Mann noted in his history of cognitive process training (1979), this latter belief has a long and distinguished history.
