At least a dozen times I've asked hundreds of people in an audience to look around a room identifying everything that is brown and instruct them to remember what they see because this is a very important experiment.
Then I ask everyone to close their eyes.
Everyone knows where everything brown is because each of their brains have been instructed to focus and find all brown...and they have been told that this is an important task.
"Now, point to something green."
No one can do it.
Those that point somewhere inevitably fail.
No doubt you may have participated in this fascinating experiment in the past as well.
The Fascinating Human Brain
It's an amazing thing about the human brain. We can retain an unbelievable amount of information.
But in this case, we can't remember where *anything* green might be...
We weren't told to look for it...
Imagine your friend teaches a grade school class and little Billy is acting up in the back. Your friend tells a fellow teacher about the experience.
"The kid is always acting up. He's probably 'ADD' and I wish he was on his way out. He's driving me nuts."
"Huh. I guess I've never seen it in his behavior. He can be talkative but he never misbehaves in my class and he's a pretty sharp kid. Sometimes even helpful to the other students."
Your friend looks at the fellow teacher as if he has lost his marbles.
Your friend will not likely ever see the student in any way other than he has and the other teacher will likely not change his view that the student is a pretty good kid.
Here's what happens when the second teacher visits the first teacher's class to observe...
