“Teachers are losing the education war because our adolescents are distracted by the social world. Naturally, students don’t see it that way. It wasn’t their choice to get endless instruction on topics that don’t seem relevant to them. They desperately want to learn, but what they want to learn about is their social world—how it works and how they can secure a place in it that will maximize their social rewards and minimize the social pain they feel… How do our schools respond to these powerful social motivations? Schools typically take the position that our social urges ought to be left at the door, outside the classroom… I believe the real solution is to stop making the social brain the enemy during class time and figure out how to engage the social brain as part of the learning process.”  p. 283

Social: Why Our Brains Are Wired to Connect, by Matthew D. Lieberman