Abstract

Scope and method of study. This study is an examination of emotion as it relates to learning in the school environment, and learning in general. By necessity, aspects of emotion other than those dealing with schooling were also examined. Emotions related to the school experience are directly connected to the emotional life outside of school. Therefore, emotional influences regarding marketing and advertising, popular culture, and politics were also analyzed. This study relied heavily on prior research by other scholars in arriving at its final conclusions. A form of the axiomatic method was employed in this study. This is a method of reorganizing accepted propositions and concepts in order to illuminate the present study. ;Findings and conclusions. The findings and conclusions offered in this paper are purely theoretical. The primary propositions outlined are these: Emotion, or "affect" is far more important in mental processes than has been previously supposed. All thought, and memory is affective directed. All data entering the mind is given both referential and significance "tags" before being committed to memory. The significance tag is the fundamental unit for the later construction of emotion. Memory in humans is a pure affective memory, and therefore all aspects of "mind" are in service to emotion rather than to rationality. Since memory is affective driven, then school curriculums should be designed so that every component of every lesson contains a significance tag to accompany the referential one. The philosophical concept of "mind" and emotion has been directed and driven by the subjective and exceptionalist view that matters of the mind are unknowable. This centuries-old dogma has derailed and misdirected scholarship related to the deciphering of brain processes.