Neurologists are now beginning to see some forms of memory in operation. (i.e., they can literally watch specific patterns of activity within the brain light up on a computer screen as a result of functional MRI or CAT scans). To the researchers’ surprise memory does not exist in just one, but throughout the brain. Rather memory traces seem to follow those neural-networks which the individual – at the time of original thought – found most to his advantage. The neural-network might have been activated for only a short time, and been designed for a specific purpose which is no longer applicable, and may well cross many “domains,” but even when that route is no longer needed a trace of its past activity is still present. If part of the network is later activated, it may well “question” why it is not being asked to complete the set of original connections.

“What we know (about the brain) is growing at a phenomenal pace., yet all this does is to increase my amazement at its almost unimaginable complexity.”

Professor Marion Diamond 1994

The Western World is only slowly coming to recognize what earlier cultures knew intuitively; for instance, Asian people have known for a long time that it will improve the brain of the developing fetus if the mother is relaxed by fine music, and stimulated by rich conversation. Too much stimulation, however, at any stage in life, turns a challenge into a threat The brain deals with this easily. It just “turns off.” To effectively work at challenging tasks, research is now suggesting, requires significant amounts of reflective time. Learning is very much a reflective activity. “I need to go away and think that over” is a critical part of brain functioning.” It is not a practical strategy to apply in a normal classroom!

All this is done spontaneously in response to challenge. The brain does not have to be taught to learn. Learning is what it does – automatically. To thrive it needs plenty of stimulation, and it needs suitable feedback systems. Effective learning is dependent upon emotional energy. We are driven (the ancestral urges of long ago) as much by emotion as by logic. Children who learn because they simply want to work something out because it matters to them, are far more resilient and determined when they face problems than children who seek external rewards. The same goes for adults. Intrinsic motivation is far more significant’ than extrinsic. When in trouble the first group searches for novel solutions, while the latter looks for external causes to blame for their failure. The brain is essentially a survival system; it takes seriously those things which matter to it. Emotional well-being may well be more essential – to the brain – for survival than intellectual.

Since no two brains are exactly alike, no enriched environment will completely satisfy any two individuals for an extended period of time. No matter what form the enrichment takes it is the challenge that matters; passive observation is not enough, it is interactivity that is so essential. “Tell me and I forget. Show me and I remember. Let me do and I understand,” says the ancient Chinese proverb.

The brain learns best, and learns to grow more, when it is exercised in highly challenging but low-threat environments. Learning and emotion cannot be separated.”

With these new understandings of the brain, and the reinforcement these give to earlier theories about learning that grew out of cognitive science, we are now in a far better position to fuse formal learning structures onto natural learning predispositions that extend them “beyond what comes naturally.” Simply put, we now know how to make it possible for people to become better learners. The implications of this for society and the economy are massive. This will change everything. It is both exciting, and possibly terrifying. Remember, all of this is interconnected; someone once commented, “if we are to have criminals in society, pray God they be not too intelligent.”

4 Evolving Ideas about Learning

“Not everything that counts can be counted, and not everything that can be counted, counts.”

Einstein

The human brain is so large that, unlike other species, most of its growth has to take place after birth…otherwise the child’s head would never get down the mother’s birth canal. The human baby, therefore, remains dependent on its mother for longer than any other species while the mother remains dependent on others to support her during a long period of succor. However, in modern societies more and more parents leave their infants in the care of “nurseries” several weeks after delivery in order to return to the workplace. Unfortunately, “there is an increasing number of reports demonstrating that extensive non-maternal and non-paternal care in the first two years of life is a risk factor for the increased development of insecure patterns of attachment and elevated levels of aggression” later in childhood and adulthood.

“Learning is an immensely complex business that we seek to simplify and cofify at our peril. To put faith in a highly directive, prescriptive curriculum is to so ‘go against the grain of the brain’ that it will inhibit creativity and enterprise…the very skills needed in the complex, diverse knowledge society that we need to prepare our children for.”

Education 2000 1994

As the human race has evolved so social bonds have become increasingly essential. Neurologists suspect that there is a direct relationship between big brains and speech. Speech has given humans the unique ability to share ideas, and from this we have evolved to become the planet’s preeminent learning species. “I don’t know what I think until I speak,” said another perceptive ll-year old.

The process of learning is as old as life itself. It has passed from simple self- organization to a collaborative, social, problem-solving activity much dependent on talk, practical involvement and experimentation. Formal schooling, dependent as it is on instruction based around simulated reality, is so recent (five or six generation in most places) that it is unlikely to have had any impact on our inherited predisposition to learn in ways that our ancestors found so useful. Adults assume that learning and schooling are synonymous. Young children certainly don’t. To them the world is open to endless investigation – as far as Mars and astro-physics for the ll-year old, while also including poetry and music, a familyÑand ultimate questions.

Good as they are, our natural predispositions to learn are no longer adequate to the needs of our present world. Ways have to be found of extending them so that we can “go beyond what comes naturally” if we are to respond effectively to the 17-year old’s plea: “How can you help us to so understand how we learn that we can deal with novel situations when there is no one around to tell us what to do?”

This is the central issue. It is called meta-cognition; the ability to think about your own thinking, and the development of skills that are genuinely transferable and not tied to a single body of knowledge, and so can be applied in different settings. It is linked to a form of intelligence that is becoming known as reflective intelligence. In a world of continuous change this has to be the fundamental factor, so fundamental that it all too easily gets taken for granted.

Natural systems of learning culminated in every known culture in some form of apprenticeship – be it among Pacific Islanders, Native Americans, Europeans or within the Brazilian jungle. Apprenticeship incorporated two aspects of our evolutionary inheritance – the “predisposition” to learn such things as language, calculation, social skills, and the less well understood nature of adolescence. Adolescence is currently seen as a “problem” in Western Society; that excess of hormones leaves the rapidly maturing child unaware of its new physical strength, and confused as how to direct it While modem parents and teachers find adolescence disruptive, earlier cultures directed this energy in ways that developed those key skills on which the community was dependent for its ongoing survival. In doing so it also ensured that young people learned, and practiced, what was seen as appropriate social behavior.

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