When you think about your favorite teacher, you probably don’t remember what grades they gave you – you remember how they made you feel. Maybe they got you excited about a book or a science experiment, showed you care during a hard time, or gave you a piece of advice that stuck.
A new book from Isabelle Hau, executive director of the Stanford Accelerator for Learning, explores the science behind why relationships are key to learning and development, from the early years through adulthood. In Love to Learn: The Transformative Power of Care and Connection in Early Education, Hau explains why relationships are in crisis in our individualistic, technology-infused society, and what can be done about it.
We spoke with Hau about the importance of nurturing, loving relationships and how the book’s themes connect to the work of the Accelerator.
What are the top three takeaways you hope readers gain from the book?
The first key takeaway is that relationships – connecting with others in positive and healthy ways – really matter. Most parents and educators intuitively know that nurturing relationships matter. What they may not know is that relationships drive brain development and later academic and social emotional outcomes in children. Research has shown that children who experience nurturing relationships tend to have a larger hippocampus, a brain region critical for memory, learning, and emotional regulation. Relationships—or the absence of them—shape a child’s ability to learn, connect, and thrive for life.
The second takeaway is that our societies are constructed so our circles of relationships are contracting. In 2020, for example, 44 percent of high school youth reported having no source of supportive relationships – either adults or peers, a reduction by half from a decade earlier. We have families that are smaller; we have less play because we have more focus on academic achievements and preparation for college; and that focus is starting in earlier age groups, leading to fewer friendships. Then we have technology in our lives, that can be a force for good in terms of augmenting our circles of relationships, or be the opposite, isolating us further. As artificial intelligence increasingly shapes education and human interaction, it is essential to prioritize relational intelligence so that AI enhances, rather than replaces, the deep human bonds that are foundational to well-being and learning.
A third big takeaway would be more hopeful, that there are lots of positive trends that are underway in changing those paradigms, whether they are happening within schools or in our communities. Innovative school models, new policies, and relational technology tools are emerging, all focused on increasing relationships. States are adopting policies on play and community school models. There’s lots of inspiration that we can draw from.
Your book highlights the importance of love and relationships in child development. At the same time, reading and math scores are down. Do you see a tension between focusing on relationships and focusing on academics?
There is zero tension! Actually, it’s a false dichotomy in our understanding of intelligence, where we think that “soft” and “hard” skills are mutually exclusive. We need relationships for our brains to develop and for us to learn. Those concepts are not mutually exclusive; they're actually driving each other. For kids to be able to perform in math and reading, they learn better if they are safe and if they feel like they are nurtured.
There is even research showing that a child, when watching Sesame Street, learns more if an adult is present. Recent research from Patricia Kuhl at the University of Washington also suggests that babies who are in the presence of another baby learn more and vocalize more. And the higher the number of other babies a baby is exposed to, the more they learn! Our brains are social and we learn socially.
You’ve cited a lot of research. Can you comment on how research helped guide your takeaways?
The book is heavily researched because I wanted to make sure that what I was observing in my work was substantiated with research. Also, I wanted to make sure that the book was elevating all the phenomenal research that is happening from multiple areas of science, including neuroscience, neurobiology, and learning science, that are all converging on the importance of loving relationships in learning.
I was most interested in the latest cutting edge science. I have an entire section, for example, on the concept of neural synchrony, when the brain activity of multiple people becomes correlated over time. Our phenomenal colleague at Stanford Graduate School of Education, Bruce McCandliss, a faculty affiliate of the Accelerator, is studying this right now at Synapse School, a TK-8 school in Menlo Park, California. There are other colleagues studying this in animals and in humans, showing how we learn through being in groups and through brain synchrony with others, which I think is a really interesting area of neuroscience.
How did your work at the Accelerator inform the writing of the book?
In the book, I speak about a number of examples that are part of the Stanford Accelerator for Learning. For example, I reference the Autism Glass Project, led by Faculty Affiliates Dennis Wall and Nick Haber and Filming Interactions to Nurture Development (FIND), led by Phil Fisher, faculty director of the Stanford Center on Early Childhood, an initiative of the Accelerator. Both use technology to enhance human connections. I also speak about the work from computer scientist and Faculty Affiliate John Mitchell, on using AI agents to foster classroom collaborations. A lot of the solutions that we are working on at the Accelerator align well with the thesis that I developed in the book, and influenced the book meaningfully. Of course, the book draws from other expert scholars at other institutions and organizations, as well, but I’m fortunate to learn directly from my colleagues here.
What are the actionable steps you hope readers will take after finishing the book?
Kids have four concentric circles of relationships: one is family, two is friends, three is school, and four is the community. I have recommendations for each level.
For parents and families, I have recommendations around how to make family time more relational time. How can we think about the family in a new way, where extended connections are also part of the family setting? How can we re-engage with older adults, for example, or community members at large outside of the core nuclear family circle? How can we harness technology to foster connection and active learning?
On friends, my big recommendation is a greater focus on play - both free play and guided play. We know that play, whether in recess time at school, in parks, or at home, drives more friendships and is associated with better academic learning. Children play outdoors half what their parents did. How can we make play more important in our lives, starting in the earliest years, but also throughout life?
Third, I would like schools to become more relational hubs. That means elevating what teachers already love doing, which is more relational time, ideally with small ratios, and relational teaching methods. For example, project-based learning, small group projects, and pairing of children or small groups in class foster relational learning.
I also think it’s important to make schools more open to community members and to families so that they feel more connected to the school as a resource and gathering place in their neighborhood. It could be as small as inviting families to come to the library at school. Small things can make a big impact. There are many schools that are doing this extremely well, including a big movement on PK-12 community schools that is promising.
The last area of recommendation is for communities. I would like communities to become more and more what I call “care-full,” where we have, for example, community centers that welcome families for different activities. There are some beautiful examples that I mention in the book in Hawaii and New Orleans that I had a chance to visit. I would love to see more of those models expand. We could also have bus stops, laundromats, or parks become more and more focused on care, play, and learning for everyone.
The goal with all of these recommendations is for relationships to be more prevalent in our education systems and our society. I believe that one of the things that will continue making us profoundly human is our ability to connect with others and learn from others. Is there a risk that even this is being replaced over time by machines? Potentially. But I think this is where we will continue to learn and thrive as a species.
