The field of education is contentious and resistant to innovation or change. There seems to be a growing sense that the problems that education systems face is just too difficult and multifaceted to fix. Most importantly, the focus is on how to “fix education infrastructure” (improve teachers, reduce class size, improve curriculum, develop alternative school models, etc.) rather than to “build better learners” by enhancing each child’s neural capacities and motivation for life-long learning.
Less than two decades ago the concept that you could improve educational outcomes by increasing each person’s neural capacities for learning would have been inconceivable because mainstream medicine and science believed that brain anatomy (and hence learning capacity) was fixed at birth. It is commonly believed that children enter school with differing (genetically endowed) brain capacities and that teachers must just make-do with these individual differences in learning capacity. Recent breakthroughs in the neuroscience of learning have demonstrated that this view is fundamentally wrong.
The US has spent billions of dollars on educating and supporting teachers or developing curricula but no resources are applied to “improving the brain” that a student brings to the classroom. To this end, the educational systems lack an understanding of and do not utilize recent advances in the neurological underpinnings of learning. As such, these systems do not successfully take into account individual differences in brain development, or have tools to address optimally these.
In the past few decades, neuroscientists have made enormous strides in understanding the neural basis of learning, much as medical researchers continue to understand the physical basis of disease. They have uncovered several neurological capacities and competencies that are both measurable and that significantly affect educational outcomes—similar to biomarkers used to understand disease and its progression. Most importantly, neuroscience research has demonstrated that, contrary to popular belief, the brain is not static. Rather, the brain is highly modifiable (“plastic”) throughout life, and this remarkable “neuroplasticity” is primarily experience-dependent. Neuroplasticity research showed that the brain changes it’s very structure with each different activity it performs, perfecting its circuits so it is better suited to the task at hand.
Recent developments in the science of neuroplasticity show that fundamental neural capacities that form the building blocks for learning can be significantly improved at any age in our lives. Just as physical exercise is a well-known and well-accepted means to improve health for anyone, regardless of age or background, so can the brain be put “into shape” for optimal learning.
There are many neurological capacities that constitute the underpinnings of learning, even when learning is defined broadly to include reading, math, social communication, emotional well-being, and creativity. These universal building blocks for learning include:
– Attention, the ability to focus across time on relevant information and ignore distractions
– Prediction, the ability to anticipate what is about to come next
– Memory; of which there are several different component parts including short and long term memory, memory for episode in your life (episodic memory) and memory for facts (declarative memory).
– Processing speed; how fast incoming sensory and motor information can be detected, discriminated, sequenced
– Spatial skills; how information in space is perceived, manipulated and stored
– Executive functions; higher level cognitive functions such as inhibitory control, planning, reasoning, decision making.
Improving one or more of these neural capacities/competencies has been shown to improve student performance, independent of content (language, math, science) or curriculum used. This is a far-reaching and potentially revolutionary conclusion that is contrary to the current beliefs of many teachers, administrators, parents and students, who have historically emphasized curriculum as the key to improved learning.
We can, after all, build better learners by enhancing their basic neural capacities and should focus on optimizing each student’s neural capacities for learning to avoid widespread failure of the educational systems, particularly for the underprivileged.
Just as new knowledge and understanding is revolutionizing the way we communicate, trade, or practice medicine so too must it transform the way we learn. We owe it to our children to equip them with all the capabilities they’ll need to thrive in the limitless world beyond the classrooms.
I agree it’s important that we leave better country for our children, but I believe it’s more important that we leave better children for our country.
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Source: Forbes – http://goo.gl/JYzGP
