Schank informs the reader that information is surprises. You learn something when things do not turn out the way you expected. We are constantly trying to learn things and when we do not we are bored, but we can only learn things at a slightly higher level than we are at. We learn things by "case-based reasoning." Something happens, we label it with an abstract label and then later we experience something new that we can compare with something that happened previously. Through this process we learn something new. Our intelligence comes from a long process of adding new experiences to our memory. We learn by doing things not by memorizing. We should learn by following what interests us. One on one teaching is best so that questions can be asked and answered. Schank asserts that computers can provide the one on one sort of teaching needed for learning. He also maintains that you should only read when you are prepared for reading.

For Schank, knowledge is not a set of facts. What is important is how you acquire knowledge, otherwise what you are learning is an unrelated set of facts. Knowledge is an integrated phenomenon; there is an interconnectedness of facts, one to another. Note what Neil Postman has to say about the interconnectedness of information and context. Perhaps the hyperlink contained within the foregoing sentence is one kind of interconnectedness of information that Postman has not considered. It is a new kind of information interconnectedness, although Postman's point is well taken.

Schank is very hostile toward Noam Chomsky, a well-know linguist, who asserts that language is not about meaning, it is about syntax. Chomsky also asserts that "inference has nothing to do with language, it has to do with memory, and memory has nothing to do with language." But Schank asserts that meaning, inferences and memory are very important components of language.

There are several commentators on Schank’s chapter at the end of the chapter. One of these, Murray Gell-Mann, states that computers should be used for the routine parts of learning, freeing up the teachers for the interactive aspect of teaching. In this regard, he censures universities for their use of lectures as the primary mode of teaching.