the value of asking: what if?
TRANSCRIPT
2 October 2010 | NewScientist | 3
EDITORIAL
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EDUCATION is the “inculcation of the incomprehensible into the indifferent by the incompetent” according to the late economist John Maynard Keynes.
In recent years, a wide range of research has been used to inform education policy and practice. Arguably it could go further. In this issue we explore a few of the brain-boosting techniques currently under study, from meditation to music. Some of them could be useful as educational tools (see page 28).
Such research raises a much wider question. Wouldn’t it be handy if we found out how the brain really works – and how children learn best – and then apply these insights to everyday teaching practice?
Over a decade ago, John Bruer of the James S. McDonnell Foundation in St Louis, Missouri, argued that it was possible to bridge the gap between neuroscience and cognitive science, and also the gap between cognitive science and education. But he concluded that the overall gap between the domains of neuroscience and education was “a bridge too far”.
Even today, a grand theory of learning that can exert a direct
influence on education looks a distant prospect.
There has been important progress, though. A few days ago at the Royal Society in London, the UK government minister responsible for science and universities was given a picture of the potential and the limitations of neuroscience during one session of the society’s Brain Waves project, led by Uta Frith of University College London (UCL). The outlook was upbeat.
Neuroscience has underlined
the importance of emotional engagement in learning, backing the claim of educational progressives that children learn best when actively involved rather than having facts drummed into them. That’s hardly rocket science but does at least provide insights that complement those of educational psychology.
Neuroscientists have revealed sensitive periods that affect learning, and shown that the brain remains receptive, even into adulthood. Measures of
brain performance, even scans of neural activity, could go beyond the identification of major learning disorders to reveal individual strengths and weaknesses and also decide which teaching method, or indeed which teacher, is best suited to each child. One day we may be able to individualise teaching.
Another delegate at the Royal Society meeting, Sarah-Jayne Blakemore of UCL, says that one clear-cut application of neuroscience has been to dispel many myths that have come from the use of neurojargon to make half-baked ideas seductive, such as the focus on multiple kinds of intelligence in children, rather than simply how “bright” they are.
Other neuromyths include the value of “brain training”; the idea that some people are “left-brained” and others “right-brained”, when the hemispheres communicate constantly; and that we only use a fraction of our brain. Nonsense, we use all of it.
Now that we have dealt with the incompetent twisting of neuroscience, educational researchers are all set to exploit the genuine stuff to inculcate the newly comprehensible into the fully engaged. n
From neuromyth to realityNeuroscience is poised to become a key influence on education
TIME may end in 5 billion years, according to physicist Ben Freivogel at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (see page 6). But before you roll your eyes at the latest pronouncement to come from those crazy cosmologists, remember that it is provocative for good reason.
Thought experiments, such as the one that spawned this idea of the end of time, are cleverly
designed to expose weaknesses in our thinking. They have a long history. When Erwin Schrödinger formulated his famous feline thought experiment, he wasn’t trying to argue that cats in boxes are both alive and dead. Rather, he was making a reductio ad absurdum argument to show the peculiarities of quantum mechanics. Likewise, Einstein’s ponderings on what a beam of
light would look like if you were riding alongside it led to special relativity and then to general relativity, a new theory of gravity.
By suggesting that time will end, the work by Freivogel will help physicists think more deeply about cosmology in a multiverse. When you are trying to grasp something as mind-boggling as a multiverse, a thought experiment can be the best tool of all. n
The value of asking ‘What if?’
“Wouldn’t it be useful if we found out how the brain really works and applied the insights to teaching?”
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