Learning is one of psychology's favourite topics. It is true that the world's top universities, like Oxford, the Sorbonne or Yale, and the secondary schools that feed into them, evolved largely without its help. Now, however, the field is justifiably more competitive and a broader spectrum of students needs to understand a more complex, shrinking and faster-changing world. Stagnant or provincial educational traditions are creaking under the pressure. Psychology, a relatively new discipline, may just be the ticket to help.

Psychology confirms that it is relatively easy to teach facts such as dates, sequences and definitions. Great swathes of such material constitute the backbone of traditional education. What is harder, but infinitely more rewarding, is to inculcate deep understanding, and the ability to think in a structured and disciplined way, like a historian, artist, mathematician or scientist, for example.