Jane M. Healy, Ph.D.
Meaningful
learning -- the kind that will equip our children and our society for
the uncertain challenges of the future -- occurs at the intersection of
developmental readiness, curiosity, and significant subject matter. Yet
many of today's youngsters, at all socioeconomic levels, are blocked
from this goal by detours erected in our culture, schools, and homes.
Fast-paced lifestyles, coupled with heavy media diets of visual
immediacy, beget brains misfitted to traditional modes of academic
learning. In a recent survey, teachers in both the United States and
Europe reported overwhelmingly that today's students have shorter
attention spans, are less able to reason analytically, to express ideas
verbally, and to attend to complex problems. Meanwhile, school curricula
modes of instruction do little to remedy the deficits by engaging
either attention or curiosity. The result? A growing educational
"crisis" of misfit between children and their schools.
Narrowing
the gap between the school's demands and the "readiness" of the
students' brains can be accomplished in two ways: changing the student
and/or changing the classrooms. Both are possible. Let's start with the
students.
Shaping the Malleable Mind
The
brain's functioning -- and thus its "readiness" for any type of
learning -- is shaped by both intrinsic and extrinsic factors. Genetic
nature combines with prenatal nurture to endow the infant brain with a
range of possibilities, but the environment after birth helps forge the
neuronal connections that underlie later learning. Like a sculptor, the
child's experience prunes away unneeded -- or unused -- synapses, while
strengthening those patterns of connections that are repeatedly used.
Thus habits of the mind may become, quite literally, structures of the
brain. Although the susceptible cell groups comprise but a small
proportion of total brain mass, they are critical to learning because
they facilitate higher-level thinking, planning, and skills of mental
organization so essential to self-directed and meaningful human
learning.
While our understanding of this phenomenon
of "neural plasticity," or malleability, of the growing brain is still
rudimentary, several principles suggest themselves from the research.
First, repeated experiences cause synaptic differences if they comprise a
significant part of a child's mental life. For example, the brains of
deaf children, or of those otherwise deprived of oral language
experience, develop differently from those of hearing children because
of differences in the dominant types of input to which they have
responded. As yet no one has attempted to demonstrate less dramatic
brain changes from a heavy diet of video and rushed, adult-directed
activities or from immersion in thoughtful conversation and spontaneous
creative play, but it is eminently possible that they exist. (Certainly,
anecdotal information from teachers suggests that there has been a
shift in information-processing abilities of children in recent years.)
Secondly,
animal research and common sense converge on the notion that a brain
which is actively involved and curious is likely to develop stronger
connections than one which is merely a passive recipient of learning.
Third, there appear to be critical, or at least "sensitive" periods in
the course of development when certain neuron groups become particularly
amenable to stimulation. If sufficient mental exercise is lacking, the
related ability may be permanently degraded. This phenomenon has been
demonstrated for basic aspects of human language development; very
little is known, however, about its applicability to most human
learning, particularly the higher-level skills (e.g., understanding of
more complex syntax, abstract and analytic reasoning, self-generated
attention) which may have sensitive periods well into adolescence. In
today's world, these skills appear to be particularly endangered.
So,
how do we change the children? First, we stop blaming them -- and their
teachers. Parents, policy-makers, and the arbiters of popular culture
are also part of the the problem. If we wish to retain the benefits of
literate thought, we must educate parents, encourage more constructive
uses of media, and set our priorities in every classroom to show
children from the earliest years how to get ideas into words and to
listen -- not only to peers and to adults, but also to the voice of an
author. I would suggest that every home and every school institute a
"curriculum" for listening and following sequential directions, as well
as emphasizing the use of language to talk through problems, to plan
behavior, and to reason analytically about such concepts as cause and
effect. Deficits in these fundamental "habits of mind" cause not only
academic but also social problems. Reading instruction should take a
back seat until language foundations and skills of auditory analysis and
comprehension are in place, lest reading become a meaningless exercise.
Someone
must also take time to listen to the children, soften the frenetic
scheduling of their lives, read to them, give them some quiet time to
play, to ponder, to reflect, and to use the inner voice that mediates
attention and problem-solving. Without adult models, children cannot
shape their own brains around these intellectual habits which, in the
long run, will be far more valuable to all concerned than a frantic
march through content. The executive, or prefrontal, centers of the
brain, which enable planning, follow-through, and controlled attention
along with forms of abstract thought, develop throughout childhood and
adolescence. We have a responsibility to children -- all children -- to
demonstrate the habits of mental discipline and attention necessary to
reflect on, utilize, and apply the information they learn. If the
culture refuses to cooperate by providing models outside of school, we
must add it to our academic curriculum -- even if it means sacrificing
some of the data in the syllabus
Since each brain's developmental timetable is different, we must also disabuse ourselves of the notion that children can be made to
learn on a set schedule. And, finally, we should recognize that whoever
is minding the children is shaping our national intelligence -- and
choose and reward these persons accordingly.
Expanding Minds for a New Century
Merely
reinstating some of the mental habits of a bygone era will not suffice,
however. We must also accept and capitalize on the fact that today's
children come with new skills for a new century. The changes we observe
in our children may, in fact, represent a cusp of change in human
intelligence -- a progression into more immediate, visual, and
three-dimensional forms of thought. Schools will need to accept the fact
that lectures and "teacher talk," which commonly comprise approximately
90% of classroom discourse, must give way to more effective student
involvement. Today's learners must become constructors of knowledge
rather than passive recipients of information that even the least
intelligent computer can handle more effectively. Many examples already
exist in outstanding literature-based programs that turn students on to
reading, writing, and oral communication, "hands-on" science and math
curricula in which product takes a back seat to understanding of
process; project-oriented, multidisciplinary social studies units;
cooperative learning paradigms; multi-modal teaching; training of
teachers in open-ended questioning.
Particularly
exciting are curricular innovations in which the unlimited potential of
visual thinking is used to complement language and linear analysis.
Courses in critical viewing and effective use of visual media are
examples; computer simulations requiring step-by-step progression to
three-dimensional reasoning herald development of new skills which may
eventually transcend the linear constraints of scientific method and
even unite the talents of the two cerebral hemispheres in expanded modes
of thought.
Traditional parameters of learning must
be broadened, even redefined, not simply because of the changing
priorities of future technologies, but also because of present
realities. Our growing crisis in academic learning reflects societal
neglect of the neural imperatives of childhood. We find an alienation of
children's worlds -- and the mental habits engendered by them -- from
the traditional culture of academia. Merely lamenting this fact,
however, does not alter the reality or rebuild the brains. Nor does
choking our young with more didacticism -- under the rubric of
"competency" -- make them learn to think. In past decades we got away
with insignificant subject matter and poor pedagogy because the culture
dutifully sent us docile minds, well-endowed with the linguistic
currency of academic learning. But our children today have been
differently prepared, and, sophisticated consumers that they are, do not
suffer drivel lightly -- nor should they.
Closing
the gap between wayward synapses and intellectual imperatives will not
be accomplished by low-level objectives, such as memorization and
recapitulation of information. Human brains are not only capable of
acquiring knowledge; they also hold the potential for wisdom. But wisdom
has its own curriculum: conversation, thought, imagination, empathy,
reflection. Youth who lack these "basics," who have forgotten how to ask
the questions that may never have been asked, who cannot ponder what
they have learned, are poorly equipped to become managers of our
accelerating human enterprise.
The final lesson of
neural plasticity is that a human brain, given good foundations, can
continue to adapt and expand for a lifetime. Its vast synaptic potential
at birth can bend itself around what is important of the "old" and
still have room for new skills demanded by a new century. A
well-nourished mind, well-grounded in the precursors of wisdom as well
as of knowledge, will continue to grow, learn, develop -- as long as it
responds to the prickling of curiosity. Perhaps this quality, above all,
is the one we should strive to preserve in our children. With it,
supported by language, thought, and imagination, minds of the future
will shape themselves around new challenges -- whatever societal neglect
of the neural imperatives of childhood may be. But if we continue to
neglect either these foundations or the curiosity that sets them in
motion, we will truly all be endangered.
About: Jane M. Healy
Dr. Jane Healy's first book, Your Child's Growing Mind, has in a few short years become a classic reference and guide for parents. Based on recent research in developmental neuropsychology, her book discusses the development of language, intelligence, and memory, along with academic skills.
It has been a major contribution in explaining the dangers of pushing academically demanding subjects down into the early years, when many children are not yet physically or psychologically able to cope with them. Her book, Endangered Minds: Why Children Don't Think and What We Can Do About It (recently revised and reissued), carries the theme even further, as she discusses other current pressures which may limit human development -- and what can be done about them.
Dr. Healy graduated from Smith College and received her master's degree from John Carroll University. She holds a doctorate in educational psychology from Case Western Reserve University, and has engaged in postdoctoral studies at Columbia Teachers' College and Boston Children's H
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