Brain, Education, and Inquiry - Fall, 2010: Session 1

We discussed last week the deficiency of an education (or simply an understanding of education,) that focused simply on classroom learning rather than life experience and more personal growth...and I couldn't help thinking that it was unfair to use this is blanket criticize institutional learning, particularly when you consider Haverford and Bryn Mawr. I did customs week for the third time this year, a whole week with barely any mention to the academic side of college. We taught each other about our backgrounds and the effect on multiculturalism, the honor code, how to keep ourselves and each other safe while exploring new opportunities, and how our secrets and the ability to trust each other with them makes us aware of our capacity for unity and compassion in disagreement as well as when on the same page. We spend about 12 hours a week in class (if we're lucky humanities majors ;) ) in class, and though another block of time is then devoted to homework, we make a life here at school, not a life that is school in the structured sense of the word. We come here to learn, but learning happens at Plenary too, and afinity group meetings, and just living side-by-side with others. The institution is designed to teach freedom, and to teach outside of the realm of academic achievement. I just think that's important credit to give.
On a completely different subject, not related to last class but to what I hope to get from the rest of the class, I want to emphasize a focus on not only policy, but how individual brain development factors into processing new information (and dealing with new social requirements- c'mon, you know that was the harder part of kindergarten) through childhood as well as adulthood. What causes us to retain new information? What individual differences account for different learning styles, focuses, and speeds? There's a lot of information, as well as the discussion, that I'd like to learn from this semester. :) 

A couple of words/phrases stood out to me in the last class: “access”, “agency”, and “knowledge is power”. In thinking about theses words and how they pertain to education, I couldn’t ignore the fact that they are deeply interconnected. If access and agency are two things that are dependent on capital then “knowledge is power” is relative- intentionally, in my opinion.  The fact that society defines knowledge and education so heavily in the context of schooling is no coincidence to me. Like someone stated in the last class, the purpose of education is to reestablish social norms and to maintain and feed into the existing societal structure…its to keep the people at the bottom at the bottom and visa versa, to separate the “have” from the “have nots”. Without access there is very little agency in obtaining the education (as defined by society) needed to reach the top, wherever that might be.

This summer I worked with students from Public Schools, all facing adversity of various forms. In speaking with them about school and college as well as witnessing how they approached their participation in the program, it was evident that one of the main issues was their lack of information and understanding- their lack of knowledge. They simply did not know and were not aware of certain things which had a huge impact on their current circumstances. These things include, but are not limited to, the existence and access to magnet public high schools, the existence of millions of scholarships, information regarding AP courses, facts about the college application process and college in general, and how to dress and act appropriately during an internship.  As some have mentioned, there are so many factors such as lack of resources, unhelpful and disengaged faculty, and discrimination that contribute to their lack of knowledge and therefore lack of "power". But as some have wondered, what is this power?

I agree that knowledge is something that you can gain from outside the context of schooling and in some sense I think that the most meaningful knowledge is one gained outside of the traditional classroom. But does society value that knowledge? My instinctive answer is no, but does it matter?

People asked a lot of important questions in class about different aspects of education: power, systematic inequality, methods of evaluation, effectiveness and usefulness...etc. I vaguely remember someone asked "where is the fun in all this?" This is the question that I go back to the most often at the end of the day. The reason for my attachment to this question is that I believe no matter how one defines education it should contribute to one's living of a good life. Some of you would have guessed that I'm referring  to the "good life" in the Greek tradition: a life of constant reflection. I'm not committed to the Greek tradition 100%. But I think its insights on how to live a good life can illuminate how our education should be like, and thus the systems that support this sort of education.

I want to say that I go to school because I want to change the world in a positive way: fighting against unequal access to education, changing faulty systems, and developing effective methods to help people to learn better. But i have to admit that those are not my instinctual reactions. My instincts tell me to have fun with school (and with life in general) in whatever way I can. I do not think that fun is all that there is to a good life (or a good education). But I do think that it should be part of it. It seems to me that living a enjoyable good life is the most fundamental human right and education should prepare people to live such a good life. However, it is debatable as to what exactly is a "good life".

Based on the assumption that American citizens will be able to reap the benefits of said education “privileges”, one would wonder why a disproportionate number of students are receiving a substandard education and an education gap is developing. Many questions come to mind when thinking about the issues of American education. For example: Why are some students given access to adequate resources while others aren't? Why is the American education system deemed or seen as being so unbalanced? Is education an equalizer? Do grades actually indicate knowledge or how much one learns and synthesizes the material? Should we value academic education more than experience-based education? Does language influence the way one thinks and therefore what one can achieve in an education system of a different culture? To what extent does culture, family, religion and society play a role in the definitions of the aforementioned ideas brought up in class (success, power, control, a “good” education)? etc.

I found an interesting article published in The New York Times today titled “Forget What You Know About Good Study Habits.” http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/07/education/07teachers.html The article focuses on study habits, which clearly can have an effect on one’s education and the process by which one learns. Several individuals in class have brought up the fact that different people utilize different learning styles as well as teaching approaches and many have heard about “left brain” and “right brain” learners etc., and the article at hand in turn questions the truth behind such commonly known ideas associated with education and types of learners. It also embraces the point that “the brain makes subtle associations between what it is studying and the background sensations it has at the time…regardless of whether those perceptions are conscious…and give the information more neural scaffolding,” (Benedict Carey) which I believe touches upon our discussion of the brain, learning and consciousness. Do you think that what is learned in education research should be utilized more immediately and brought to the table in our quest for educational reform as sufficient evidence for supporting a revised system? Standardized tests to cognitive scientists was thought to be a “powerful tool of learning, rather than merely assessment” how true is this statement based on your own experiences? Do tests help or change the way we think or approach future academic related coursework problems in various disciplines or even real life situations?

I am excited that so many questions, ideas and challenges will be faced and explored in this course. Hopefully the co-constructive inquiry implemented in the course will lead us to answers, extended knowledge, and varied viewpoints regardless of whether a common foundation exists.

I am currently reading "The Education of the British-Protected Child" by Chinua Achebe, and something that struck me was a quote he had that Kissinger what American was doing in Africa. When told that the America was doing EVERYTHING wrong in Africa (implying that they shouldn't have been there in the first place) Kissinger responded:

"Statistically that is impossible. Even if it is unintentional, we must be doing something right."

It made me think of education (both in Ghana and here).... We wax poetic about the failure of the school system and of teachers and administrators and everything in-between..... but truly, many of us are a product of many of the same systems we berate. The scholars and businessmen and white-collar and blue-collar workers, the activists, the tycoons - we all are products in some way, shape, or form, of that system. Surely the system coulddn't have gotten everything wrong. So the question becomes: "What did the system get right? What has it so far done correctly? And as we forge ahead and create new and better systems for education, is there anyway we can still incorporate what the old system got right?"

I think of education as a process of learning that isn't restricted to the classroom, and I think if we were discussing education outside of the setting of a college class, we might have been more likely to describe it in a broader sense. However, because "education" classes in college are about academic education we naturally assume that this will be the topic of discussion, and cater our thoughts to meet this expectation. Thus we begin talking about education as it relates to school, and are now taking a step back and saying, "wait, isn't there so much more to education?" During class I was thinking about how our setting is affecting our discussion and I wonder if there are other ways, in addition to how we're thinking about education, in which our setting is creating subconscious biases.

Like many people who have posted, I found one of the most thought-provoking (and at the same time frustrating) things about our first class to be the labels we tossed around.  We mentioned things like “education,” “teaching,” the “problem(s)” with education, the important “things we’ve learned” outside of the classroom, and many more discussion-worthy topics.  Each of these phrases or terms probably means something very different (as someone pointed out about the brain drain activity) to each member of the class, yet we never set a common definition to refer to.  Perhaps this is because all of these terms are so focused on the individual’s experience and are hard to pin down for a group of people.   I think it would be a worthwhile exercise to try and really understand each of these terms and see if and how our personal definitions overlap.   

One of the other things I am most interesting in discussing further is the “problem with education.”  I know there are many small and large problems that need to be addressed, and I would be interested in hearing different perspectives on what the problems actually are and how they would ideally be fixed vs. the reality of how they can and are being worked on.  I am excited to see how the workings of the brain play into this discussion.  I was talking about these issues with a friend and she mentioned that she believes the innovation in education should come about in its execution rather than an overhaul of the entire system.  I agree with this and think that although it’s tempting to theoretically scrap the entire system and work from a clean slate, it’s important to look at what’s being done well within education (maybe related to more modern research about how the brain works) and keep those elements while making modifications to those parts of the system that are not shown to be worthwhile - although how we define "worthwhile" is yet another question and discussion to have…

I thought it was really interesting to see how the responses to the ‘Brain Drain’ covered a broad spectrum ranging from apples to policy. There were also some recurring words, though, like grades, students, etc. What struck me, however, was how presumptive we were about what people meant. The two people who said grades, for instance,  probably meant very different things. I feel like it’s things like this that create a disconnect in general conversation as well. When we don’t define our terms, we end up talking at each other or past each other and that creates confusion and misunderstanding. That applies to education as well. Like others have mentioned, I think it’s very important to define education before we can talk about its issues. 

I feel, as it seems several of my classmates do, that it might be useful for us to begin at or somewhere near the/a beginning: what is (an) education, really? Is it a thing? Is it a process? Who does it? To whom is it done? Is it something we "have," and so capable of being discarded or abandoned? Is it a part of us? What is its relation to power/money/success/control? What does it have to do with the brain? I doubt there are obvious answers, never mind any definite ones. How might we work towards understanding these questions and imagining what their answers might look like?

Here I think we'd do well to be careful, and maybe even a little skeptical; education is something that most people think is important (maybe for a litany of reasons) but, it seems, eludes even a simple definition. To rely on a simple (and almost certainly wrong) "definition" of education, how is it possible that so many people who have been through years of schooling can hold such a broad plurality of often contradictory beliefs about the world? How can a system be complex enough to effectively accommodate the staggering degree of difference between individuals? When educated people agree on a particular belief about the world, does it reflect a common knowledge, or rather a kind of conditioned of receptivity toward a particular kind of belief about the world? These are all things that a lot of people vastly smarter than I am have been thinking about for hundreds of years, and have come to different conclusions about. Just because we are in school does not mean that we know what education is -- in fact it seems more likely that we would be self-serving in how we think about it.

In class I made a pretty unfortunate passing remark about Foucault. I only brought it up because it's sort of easy to summarize (if imprecisely) the gist of Foucault's central argument in his probably most famous book, Discipline and Punish, and by now the general shape of his worries about education and what he calls normalization seems well-disseminated enough that you can just make a reference to his thought and it's already a cliche. I think everyone's probably heard of "normalization" and the Panopticon and all that already so even if Foucault's name isn't familiar some of his ideas probably are. And I think that however we feel about those ideas, they remain important to keep in the background: education is tremendously powerful because it determines *at least* the context and foundation of all of our (educated) thoughts. Knowledge is power in at least that sense: truth claims can shape and determine the course of behavior in ways too systematic and complex to try to reproduce here. We should, I think, constantly challenge our assumptions about education: about what it is, who it works for and on, etc.

Education is a very great thing in many ways, and it also has many drawbacks. It is an important aspect of life for every individual, and the collective education of a society affects all individuals within the society. From the food we eat, to the buildings we study in, to the phones we chatter on, education allows us to create, produce, and consume for the lives we live; and that is neither an endorsement nor a condemnation of education, it is more an observation. One critique of education that does arise in my mind, from how education affects society and individuals, is how shortsighted it can be. 

One example of how education is flawed pertains to “elite education” (narrowly defined).  Last night I read “The Disadvantages of an Elite Education,” by William Deresiewicz, and I was impressed by how articulately he bashes “elite” students and the framework and institutions that they are reared in.  His final paragraph poignantly points to the flaws of elite education, explaining, “The world that produced John Kerry and George Bush is indeed giving us our next generation of leaders….The disadvantage of an elite education is that it’s given us the elite we have, and the elite we’re going to have.” Thus I say that our educational system is shortsighted because the elites in our country seem to have no idea how to run it!!

Wait though…I feel like I am attributing all of societies ills to an academic education system that is flawed, but that also does great things. I love to learn because I feel that education enables me to better interact with the world around me (this point is debatable). What I find frustrating about education, and a possible reason that it can seem shortsighted, is that good grades enable an individual to ostensibly have more options (this point is also debatable!), and grades are usually given periodically during a semester and the accumulated grade is given at the end of the semester. This system is very fragmented, and when grades, evaluations, and judgments are given in this way, and given such great meaning, then it becomes difficult to keep perspective. How much does our flawed educational system have to do with how we are evaluated (i.e. grades and standardized tests)? I am curious if others feel this way or not…And if it is a common affliction, then what are some individual or institutional remedies that can be beneficial?    

I think that at least one of the major problems with education in today's world is the societal perception of it. As in many of the quotes above and the observations in class, education is usually linked only with value as a means to success, not for its own sake. In addition, college has become a social necessity because it is assumed that if one does not acquire a college degree, then one will end up flipping burgers at Burger King or the equivalent. In particular, vocational schools are widely considered not to be a viable alternative to college, which can be a huge barrier to those who are not academically inclined but can do skilled labor very well. As a result, many people who are unlikely to succeed in higher education are nonetheless forced by their parents and/or societal expectations to go anyway. Then, when they do fail, the system itself is blamed instead of (or, I guess, in addition to) the root of the problem in societal ideas.

In particular in the US, some of the societal problem is that education is not highly valued or emphasized except, again, as a means to wealth and fame. Even then, one can point to Steve Jobs or Bill Gates, both of whom dropped out of college, and say they "made it" without extensive education. The emphasis on celebrities (who are often home-schooled and/or don't attend college/higher education) and other items of popular culture further diminishes education as a priority; instead, school is something to get out of the way.

Because this is such an elusive problem, I don't believe it can be addressed directly, unless there begin to be more advertisements for alternative schools or something. I really don't know. I believe it will fix itself in time, but I don't know what the solution would be until then.

I would love to discuss vocational schools in more detail and athletic scholarships at at least some point during the course, if not next class. Athletic scholarships demonstrate the lack of focus on education that the US displays that I was discussing before. I think (though I may be wrong) that more athletic scholarships are given per year than merit scholarships. While some students definitely excel more in athletics, I don't believe they should eclipse those who want to go to a higher education primarily to study. The entire career of athletics rather boggles me, to tell the truth.

Basically, this muddled mess is trying to convey that I think that the problem(s) with education are in societal values and ideas.

Also, Jessica, I completely agree.