Brain Behavior Institute - Session 5

Some personal information, I think in pictures.  As I am realizing that my brain has since yesterday constructed new pathways, and networks, I am beginning to be able to process, and produce meaningful output to what I interacted with yesterday.  What came to my mind initially is the scene from the movie “Mr. Holland’s Opus” when ‘Mr. Holland’ is trying to help a middle school aged red haired student discover her potential on the clarinet.  She begins to cry and confides in him that the rest of her family are musical geniuses, and that she is fearful that she will not be able to perform as well as they expect her to.  ‘Mr. Holland’ ask her what she likes best about herself; she replies her hair, which reminds her of the sunset.  He then tells her to “play the sunset.” 

Play the sunset.  How simple and yet a profound concept.   When we introduce, or re-introduce educational material to our students, we sometimes expect every moment of every class period to be interactive and responsive.  Although I really tried yesterday afternoon, I could not make any cogent response to all of the information I was processing.    As a very young child experiences the sunrise for the first time, they may be completely captivated.   As teens, they may have a vampire like response to the sunrise, covering their heads, and hoping it goes away.   Later in life, they can again appreciate the sheer beauty, wonder, splendor and illumination of the event we call the story of sunrise.

“Langston’s Ant”     I used to not understand a meaningful use for this lovely simulation, last night, one just jumped out at me.  Maybe the “story” I can use for the ant, is that it is a model of how neuron work.  Neurons will complete a series of interworking s until they are able to build connections to other neurons.   The label of barrier, may not need to be barriers at all, it is like previous input, which may allow, and encourage the neuron to make connections faster, rather than slower. 

My brain is more developed today than it was yesterday…later today, I am hopeful that I will continue to grow and become more of who I am in the process of becoming.

Just a week ago, Wil, Emily, Paul and I sat down and began to discuss the implications of consciousness.  This was my thought about the conversation:

A psychologist once noted that these education practices might've resulted from the split between the cognitive unconscious and the conscious.  At one point, it is hypothesized that there was no bi-partite brain configuration, only a unified system of the conscious and unconscious.  However, when our conscious somehow separated from the unconscious and formed the story teller function--the function where we confabulate our reality, as reality is really a figment of our minds--we gathered the ability to 'think' in different ways.  This also created a problem that hadn't been present before: we could think and we could thus conform, and were less likely to reflect upon ideas and often held our ideas back for fear of not being accepted by other individuals' story tellers.  For instance, in a one-god religious culture, an entire group of people is apt to agree that there is, indeed, only one-god.  This leads to more cohesion of the group and thus more conformity.  This cohesion and conformity make it far less likely that the story of their existence can change, and they are less likely to reflect upon their past and add new details.  In a multi-god religious culture, many people may believe diverse things about the diverse religious figures--this does not lead to the strength of cohesion and conformity that the one-god religions feel, and it is thus more probable that they be able to confabulate, add and reflect upon their culture's stories without feeling estranged from the group dynamic.

What, indeed, does our conscious hold us back from?  It obviously inhibits ideas because of social stigma, as we all experience in daily life, and as our discussion today about web creation brought up.  It was noted that many do not wish to create something on the web because they fear the critique from the public -- a social stigma of producing their ideas to a forum.  I think this opens up an opportunity: perhaps teachers can encourage public displays of ideas in order to increase confidence and lower the inhibition of the conscious over the unconscious, thus supporting the discussion of new ideas and overcoming social stigma.

I think your comparison to God is a very important one.  Paul and I discussed today that -- if Emily Dickenson is correct -- God and the brain are synonymous.  To me, this makes sense.  The brain creates out world: the sky, the people, the emotions -- everything.  Isn't this strikingly similar to the 7-days in which God created the earth, and man in his image?  If God is man's brain, and man's brain creates reality, the story of God and creation seems plausible to consider, philosophically.

So, I read your post and I'm back to the question we were mulling around this morning---what is the purpose of school/education? Should we model Geelong Grammar School's emphasis on positive psychology? Is the notion of training kids for lives of happiness off the target? Are we educating them for jobs, to be productive members of their communities, to fit a particular model? Are we educating them to know themselves or know basic skills?

I don't think that it has to be an either/or and that by disrupting our definition of the purpose for education we might just knock some of the edges off the current standardized testing/admission's goal organization found in many school communities.

Your point about asking a teacher to individualize for a class of 30 is a good one. Have you read some of the Edutopia articles about the use of technology to disrupt class and make all education student centered?