180 Teaching Minds alternatives, and finally decided on an explanation, and then perhaps you tested that explanation another time. A self-generated explana- tion is a hypothesis, and hypotheses that we have come up with our- selves serve as the basis for learning. We tend to remember what we ourselves have said and thought more than we remember the words of others, Rule #7: Help students come up with their own explanations when they have made a mistake. Here is the next one. Mistake #8: Thinking that a student remembers what you just taught him I can’t tell you how many times I have said X in a lecture or dis- cussion only to be asked why I believed not X. Why does this happen? People really don’t listen. They are not being annoying. They really can’t easily listen. There is so much going on in their own heads while you are talking that it is remarkable they hear anything of what any- one says to them. Teachers live in a world where students are worried about the perceptions of their friends, events at home, and a million other things that have nothing to do with what a teacher is saying. A teacher simply cannot assume that a student will remember what he was just told. In any case, a teacher shouldn’t necessarily be telling students the truth. How could telling a student the truth be a bad idea? When tell- ing is about facts, it is certainly a fine idea. But remember, I do not think that it is the job of a teacher to tell students facts. A teacher’s primary responsibility is to get students to understand the world bet- ter and to help enhance their capabilities. Neither of these things hap- pens through a teacher telling a student anything. Comprehension is an internal affair, arrived at by thinking. Ability comes from practice. Neither comes from a teacher. What a teacher can do is to encourage students to take on more and thus enhance their capabilities, or think more and thus enhance their comprehension. This means that telling a student a fact that he need