Do students listen to us—really?

Even if I write the answers on the board, my students still won’t be able to copy them — ha-ha.

I read that joke yesterday on Threads from one of the teachers.

Have you ever noticed how waiters repeat your order back to you?

At first glance, these seem like completely different stories. But they both hide a secret about how the brain works — a secret that’s ignored in 99% of schools. And I’m going to share it with you so you can radically improve academic performance in your school.

So, why do waiters repeat your order? Are they really that forgetful? Of course not. The point is that every person hears only what they want to hear. And if you ask a listener to repeat what was just said, it will never match 100% — often it will be completely different.

There’s even a game built around this — “telephone” — where kids laugh at how much a phrase gets distorted after being passed through 6–7 people.

That’s exactly why the waiter repeats your order — to make sure what they heard is actually what you ordered, not because they’re uneducated or careless (by the way, waiters are often more educated than their customers and are studying in college at the same time).

Have you ever seen a classroom of 20 students where, after every sentence the teacher says, each student repeats it back, and the teacher listens and says, “Oh, you heard that wrong,” or “You misunderstood this part”? Of course not. From the very first minute, students are hearing gibberish from the teacher, while the teacher, satisfied with how well they’re explaining, keeps going with the new material.

Then, five minutes later, it turns out that the theory just explained doesn’t help solve the problems — say, in math. And only 2–3 out of 20 students actually heard everything correctly and understood exactly what the teacher meant, without distortion.

The practice of active listening — where people repeat or paraphrase each other — is completely absent in schools.

So should we really be surprised that academic performance is so low, if a student can’t even be sure they’re working on the exact problem the teacher wrote on the board, rather than the one they think they saw?

Let’s break it down. Suppose a math teacher wants to teach order of operations and writes this on the board:

2*(3+5) = ?

What do students actually see?

John sees: 2*3+5 = ?

Maria sees: 23+5 = ?

Michelle sees: 20(3+5) = ?

Naturally, when they solve these, they get the wrong answer, feel frustrated, and start thinking they’re just “not made for math.”

Then they go to English class, run into the same “telephone effect,” and decide they’re not writers either.

They go to another subject, get even more discouraged, and eventually conclude: “I’m just stupid.”

When in reality, it’s just the “telephone effect.”

So what does a lesson look like in the 1% of schools that understand this?

The lesson is built around problems created by students. The teacher gives an example, the student invents a similar one, and classmates help verify that the new problem really matches the original.

The key point is this: the student solves the problem they themselves created. This ensures that the connections forming in their brain are correct — between the problem and the method of solving it — rather than between a distorted problem and a distorted solution, as happens in most classrooms.

If you’re a tutor, start using this approach right now.

Instead of saying, “Solve 2*(3+5) =,” say: “Create a problem similar to 2*(3+5) =.” If the student comes up with a good one — great, work with that. If not — show them a similar problem, ask them to restate it from memory, and then create a new one on their own. You won’t believe how much the results improve.

What if you don’t have one student, but 20? You’re a school teacher. You might say this is impossible logistically — one teacher, 20 (or even 30) students, no time. And that’s true. Without automation, doing this in a classroom is pure hell.

Thankfully, today there are specialized apps — including free ones — that help teachers organize lessons so that every student works on a problem they created themselves. Want to know which apps? Subscribe to this newsletter.

Now, let’s test your own “telephone effect.” Write down the main idea of this article on a piece of paper without looking back. Rephrase it in your own words. Compare it to the original.

See the difference? If yes - subscribe, if no - comment.