CURRENT
EDUCATION SYSTEMS –
HELP
OR HINDERANCE TO OUR CHILDREN’S DEVELOPMENT?
by Michele Wolhuter RCST
The
word education comes from the Latin root e-ducere,
which means “to lead forth” or “to draw out”.
Originally it was a midwives term meaning “to be present at the birth
of”. To educate in the truest sense
therefore, is about allowing our children the opportunity to explore their
immense potential in a safe, supportive and sensory rich environment. The real job of any education system is to
help students find themselves.
Unfortunately, this is not what always happens within the narrow
confines of the modern day classroom.
So
what exactly is going wrong? Why are we
confronted with such escalating numbers of new syndromes and ‘learning
disorders’ within our children? As many
as 80 percent of all American school children could be diagnosed as learning
disabled and given appropriate labels.
What happens to our children’s creativity and individuality as they pass
through the education system?
The
current learning environment has unfortunately failed to recognize that there
are important landmarks and stages of development that take place within each
child, and that sometimes the way children are taught can interfere with these
phases.
Learning is Sensory
“Learning
is experience. Everything else is just information”
Einstein
To
begin with we need to understand that learning first comes in through our
senses. Experiences and sensations are learning, and therefore sensory rich
environments are imperative to learning.
Unfortunately many of our educational practices today assume that people
learn best if given lots of information in either lecture or 2-D form. Students are expected to sit still, keep
their eyes forward and take notes.
Carla
Hannaford in her book Smart Moves: Why Learning Is Not All In Your Head
notes that in general current formal education relies too strongly on language
as the medium of instruction. Words, she
says, though important, are only bits of information. They are not experiental and are poor
substitutes for the directness of hands-on-learning. Words can only be understood if they produce
some kind of image in the mind of the learner – if students cannot access the
underlying images, then the words are not comprehensible. Experiences on the other hand are direct and
real, they involve the senses, emotions and movements that engage the child
fully. There is no substitute for the
force and vividness of actual experience.
The Role of Movement
It
is a sobering fact that physical activity has declined by 75% since the turn of
the century. Children today are just not
as active as previous generations, largely due to their media-companions – the
television set and the playstation.
Movement
activates the neural wiring throughout the body, making the whole body the
instrument of learning. Recent research
is helping to explain how movement directly benefits the nervous system. Muscular activities, particularly coordinated
movements, appear to stimulate the production of neurotrophins which are
natural substances that stimulate the growth of nerve cells and increase the
number of neural connections in the brain.
Unfortunately,
throughout school, children are taught not to move their bodies during
class. They are also taught to keep
their eyes forward and to only look at the teacher, the blackboard or their
book. These classroom restrictions
ignore the fact that seeing is intimately connected to movement. The eyeball is not completely shaped with
collagen fibers until approximately age 9 (Coulter, Dee Joy. Enter the Childs World Coulter Pub.,
1986). Therefore long periods of reading
without relaxing the eye by focusing into the distance could possibly cause
problems with and enlargement of the eyeball leading to near-sightedness
(myopia). It is interesting to note that
significant amounts of myopia occur at an earlier age today than in the past
and that today incidence of myopia is higher that even 20 years ago (Coleman,
H.M. Increased Myopia in Schools.
Journal of American Ophthalmic Ass, (41) 1970)15 Myopia has been linked to high anxiety
within the learning environment.
Our
eyes are only ready for reading at age 7 or 8.
Before this age children have good peripheral and depth vision, but it
is only when the frontal eye field of the frontal lobes of the brain mature,
that accurate enough eye teaming is possible for 2 dimensional focus. Eye teaming happens when the dominant eye takes the
lead when tracking across a page of writing and the non-dominant eye follows
the lead movements exactly.
It
is crucial that our children are allowed to explore every aspect of movement
and balance in their environment, whether running and playing in the great
outdoors, climbing a tree or jumping on a trampoline.
In
a study of more that 500 Canadian children, students who spent an extra hour
each day in gym class performed notably better on exams than less active
children. In a close look at thirteen
different studies on the exercise/brainpower link, exercise was found to
stimulate the growth of developing brains and prevent the deterioration of
older brains (Olsen, Eric. Fit Kids,
Smart Kids – New Research Confirmsthat Exercise Boosts Brainpower. Parents Magazine, October 1994)
Movement
is now understood to be essential to learning, creative thought and high level
formal reasoning. It is time to
consciously bring integrative movement back into every aspect of our lives and
realize that something this simple and natural can be the source of miracles.
Unique Learning Styles
As
Carla Hannaford notes we are all uniquely wired. Some of our neuronal wiring, (our nerve
networks), however, are determined by innate factors. For instance, we all show a preference for
one hand over the other, one eye over the other, even one ear over the
other. We also exhibit a preference for
one brain hemisphere over the other.
Your ‘dominance profile’ for example left brained, left eye dominance,
right ear dominance and so on will determine the way you take in information
and learn.
Each
hemisphere of the brain develops and processes information in a specific
way. The logic hemisphere (usually the
left) deals with details and processes of language and linear patterns (all
very academic and ordered).
By
contrast the right hemisphere (also called the gestalt hemisphere – meaning
whole processing or global as compared to linear), deals with images
(imagination!), rhythm, emotion and intuition.
The ‘big picture’ processing happens here.
The
logical (left brain dominant) learner generally does very well with academic
types of learning as is currently found in our schooling systems). These children are more likely to have high
self-esteem and experience less stress, because school work is geared toward
their competencies.
Gestalt
learners (usually called right brained), are able to take in the big image,
feel the emotional connections, access intuitive understanding and need to
learn kinesthetically through movement. If these learners are not adequately using
their left brains (during times of stress for instance), they will have
difficulty managing details and linear processing. Gestalt learners struggle to make it through
the current education system especially between ages 5 and 7 when they are
forced to learn linear functions in language (e.g. printing and letters) and
maths. These children begin to judge
themselves as ‘dumb’ and self-esteem plummets. The stress of schooling
heightens their inability to learn in a logical way, diminishing easy access
between both hemispheres. Gestalt
learners in our society have been strongly discriminated against. It is believed that Einstein was a gestalt
learner as his early academic failures are legendary and in later life he
frequently referred to his reliance on visual imagery rather than linear logic.
Our
educational system favors students who are left brained, can process linearly,
take in information auditorially and visually, look at the teacher and repeat
pieces of information in a logical, linear fashion. This dominance profile however, only makes
up, on average 15% of the student population.
These learners are the ones who are usually reinforced with the gifted
and talented label by the educational system.
All
of us do have a certain degree of hemispheric dominance, particularly during
times of stress. The two hemispheres of
the brain are linked together by special nerve pathways called the corpus
callosum. We need to understand that
children need opportunity to learn to use both hemispheres and stimulate the
corpus callosum which is one of the brains last maturing parts. The corpus callosum makes possible important
skills such as flexible manipulation of ideas, mature creative imagination, and
effective interplay between analytic and intuitive thinking (for example
creativity is not exclusively a gestalt function. It is a whole brain process that requires
technique and detail from the logic hemisphere and image, flow and emotion from
the gestalt hemisphere. Similarly, ease
with language requires the words and proper sentence structure from the left
and the image, emotion and dialect from the right). True
intelligence comes from the ability of using our whole brain. Poor development of this critical link between
the hemispheres can result in learning and attention problems. It is of interest to note that recent
research shows that two regions at the front of the corpus callosum are
markedly smaller in people diagnosed with certain learning disorders (Shaffer, David. Attention Deficit Hyperactive
Disorder in Adults. American Journal
of Psychiatry, May 1994). It has also been found that women have 10%
more fibers across the corpus callosum than men.
The
more we access both hemispheres, the more intelligently we are able to
function, in fact, it is necessary to use both hemispheres to be maximally
proficient at anything.
Going Against the Grain
Of
great relevance to our children’s current situation within the classroom, is
the fact that the gestalt hemisphere (right) exhibits a growth spurt of
dendrites between ages 4 and 7 and the logic hemisphere (left) a growth spurt
between ages 7 and 9. The failure to
recognize these landmarks is a root cause of many problems within education
today.
At
the very time when gestalt function is being accessed (between ages 7 and 9),
the British Curriculum of education begins alphabet and number recognition,
with reading following in quick order (all of these are logic hemisphere
functions). This might not be a problem
is we involved image, emotion, and movement and built on the student’s
imagination and vocabulary. Strangely,
we do just the opposite. We teach
children to “sit still”, learn letters and numbers in a linear fashion
(including printing, a very linear, logic hemisphere process), and read books
with simplistic vocabulary, no emotion and few images. We go directly against natural neurological
development.
“Demanding
that the young child prematurely develop symbolic capacity
means that
programs which nature intends for that period, are severely
neglected. Ironically, these early programmes are the
foundations we need
for true
abstract, symbolic capacity later. Since
nature’s imperative is
to follow the model,
however, children have no choice but to try.
With
no neural structures developed for this capacity, a majority of
children are
defeated before they begin. Guilt and a
loss of self-image
results from their
inability, while we continually test them to show
how they
fail to measure up”
Joseph
Chilton Pearce
How the Danish Schools get it Right
(extracts from Smart Moves:
Why Learning Is Not All In Your Head by Carla Hannaford)
The
Danish school system, respecting natural brain development patterns, does not
start children in school until seven years of age. They teach writing and reading from a
holistic, gestalt processing format and then move to the details later, around
age eight, when the logic hemisphere is ready to handle it.
When learning to read, the teachers asks the children to
choose a favorite song which she writes in cursive and then has the children
follow the words as they sing. This
establishes an emotional-relational connection, so important to the memory
process, since memory is closely linked to emotion in the limbic system. There is a lot of movement and rhythm play in
each learning process.
Another
unnatural challenge our children face has to do with learning to print block
letters as the first step in writing.
Printing is a highly linear process (left brained) that takes us away
from the more continuous rhythmic flow of language, both as it is experienced
in the mind and as it is expressed through the hand – as in cursive script. In many European schools they never teach
printing, and find children have no difficulty going from writing in cursive to
reading block printed text, usually at the age of eight. As Hannaford states “I am surprised there
hasn’t been more research done on the comparative effects of the ways writing
is introduced in different school systems worldwide”. Educators in
Carla
Hannaford goes on to say that the American school system follows the British
lead. At age five children are taught to
print which is the origin of many writing blocks in people today. At this early age, children have to work very
hard at printing since it defies the natural development of brain
functions. After age seven, when the
brain is developed enough to accommodate the discrete and linear operations
necessary for printing, we teach them cursive!
It is a crazy game that only serves to maintain high levels of stress
within the child.
Another
example of deep stress occurring in our children is from the excessive use of
skills tests, usually of rote memory, – as often as two or three times a
week. In short, rote memory does not
require thinking These tests induce
induce learned helplessness by promoting situations and habits where students
only study for the tests, and the students with test anxiety end up in a state
of perpetual stress.
Under
these circumstances there is no time or space to develop deep understanding of
conceps, test out new ideas through verbal and written action, or develop
deductive reasoning skills. The long
term educational effects are as predictable as they are unfortunate. Research done by Herman
Epstein shows that formal reasoning has not been a natural outcome of our
current educational process. He
discovered that at age eleven, only 5% of the population is at a formal
reasoning level. Only a quarter have
reached this level by age fourteen, and in adults he found only half are fully
functional formal thinkers.
In
the Danish public school system, students don’t begin school until age 7 and
are not tested until approximately age 14.
Their first tests measure only linguistic, scientific, technical and
mathematical skills. The final exam,
given at age 17 or 18, is not at all like the final exams you might remember
from high school. The Danish final demands
much more integrative formal reasoning
Students
choose when they will take their final exam.
Each is given a piece of art and a piece of literature, poetry or prose
(usually one of the classics). They have
a period of time to write the exam, usually a couple of weeks to a month. They are expected to prepare an integrated dissertation
tying their assigned pieces to history, biology, physics, chemistry, language
mathematics, art and social sciences.
This final exam is written in two languages and then presented to a
committee that interviews the student to determine eligibility for graduation.
On
a visit to Denmark Carla Hannaford noted that there was an impressive level of
problem solving and reasoning evident in all the Danish classrooms. The lack of disciplinary problems was also
striking. Students were honored for their
thinking skills and imagination and were encouraged to work in groups to
develop communication skills.
Each
class lesson in the Danish Schools was replete with art, music, movement and
cooperative group work. Cooperative learning encourages students to interact,
share their learning preferences, and listen to and learn from one
another. Social interaction occurring in
the course of all these educational activities honoured individual differences
and gifts, thus eliminating the labels and limitations to individual initiative
and creativity.
“In my
observation, based on years of work with schools and school
children, the
labels used for specific learning difficulties are generally
arbitary and
non-pathological ….more often than not, labeling leads
to oversimplification
and insensitivity to the very real, very unique
people
behind the label. Sadly, in some ways,
we have trapped these
children – and
adults – in a diminished view of themselves and their
potential for
learning”
Carla
Hannaford