Many people believe that the essence of high-quality learning is working alone, studying hard. Artists’ depictions of thinking and learning are often drawings and statues of individual people thinking hard. Rodin’s The Thinker is one of the most famous examples—a man sitting with his chin rested on his fist, apparently deep in thought. But thinking is inherently social. Even when we read a book alone, we are interacting with another person’s thoughts. It is very important, perhaps the essence of learning, when we develop the capacity to connect with another person’s ideas, to build them into
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