Liberal Arts Blog — the Brain — What is the Most Important Thing for Every 8th Grader to Know?
By: John Muresianu
Tags: Phisiology, Education, Liberal Arts Blog, Brain, Biology

Liberal Arts Blog — Wednesday is the Joy of Science, Engineering, and Technology Day

Today’s Topic — the Brain — what is the most important thing for every 8th grader to know?

Give it a shot. What comes to mind first? Seriously. Is there any more important subject than the human brain? What are the most important facts about it? It’s size, weight, function, location? Today, a few thoughts. Experts — please chime in. Correct, elaborate, elucidate.

WHY STUDENTS REMEMBER ALMOST NOTHING — Dendrites, Synapses, Axons

1. If the most important thing to learn in school is how to learn, the most important thing to know about the brain is how the brain does it. How does the brain create memories?

2. In a word, repetition. Repetition creates more dendrites, more synapses and bigger ones, and more layers of myelin along those axons. Use it or lose it.

3. In short, this is what I call the memory triangle — dendrites, synapses, axons. So what?

NB: The current impulse to “cover the material” in courses from history to biology and physics is that the basics are not learned. Textbooks are ten times too long. This impulse is allied with another — not to bore your students. Repetition is boring. Sorry. Repetition is the only way to learn. Third problem: the impulse to avoid the responsibility to make tough decisions — specifically the decision as to what to cut out of the curriculum to make room for the basics that need constant repeating. Yes, the key to learning not doing once or twice or three times. It’s doing is again, and again, and again…A guitar teacher once said that in Ireland the rule is you have to play a song 90X to really get it.

MORE PLUGS, MORE OUTLETS, THE HOLISTIC THING — Images, Words, Numbers

1. Dendrites and synapses are like plugs. Learning is all about connecting dots and making pathways. The more parts of the brain that are activated during learning the more powerful the memory network.

2. Every thing worth studying has a visual dimension, a quantitative dimension, and a tactile dimension. Math is everywhere and should be part of every subject taught — from music and art to sports and history. Ditto for drawing. Ditto for music — the best mnemonic tool ever.

3. Why are school walls so often blank when each square foot of wall is a teaching and learning opportunity? A chance for each teacher to display what they have decided matters most and how to teach it with numbers, images, and words. And a chance for every other member of the community to critically assess those decisions? What better way to curb the flight from accountability than a new tradition of school walls as learning machines?

NB: so what might one of those wall panels look like? Well, check out the final third of this post.

THE HIND BRAIN, THE MID-BRAIN, AND THE FORE BRAIN — the “Hand Model” (naming it to tame it — a teaching tool for home and school)

1. Remember the rule of three? No one can remember more than three things. This is not hocus pocus. Well, we have a “triune” brain. The fore brain, the midbrain and the hindbrain. From front to back or top to bottom we go from most primitive function to most advanced.

2. Dr. Dan Siegel, a clinical professor of psychiatry at UCLA Medical School, has come up with an extremely useful three-part model for the brain. The fingers are the fore brain, the palm the hindbrain, and the thumb the limbic system. Think reason, emotions, unconscious (eg. breathing, heart rate).

3. To help elementary school, high school, college students or adults to gain better control of their own emotions, teach them to use their own bodies to remember what is really going on. The closed fist with the thumb tucked underneath the fingers represents balance, harmony, control. Losing it is when the fingers lose control — symbolized by the fingers pointing straight up.

NB: A beautiful model. Beautiful in its simplicity. Visual. Tactile. An incarnation of the basic Socratic injunction to “know yourself.” And of the other saying carved in stone at the Temple of Delphi: everything in moderation.

FINAL WORD: what are the best short videos on the brain that you have ever seen? Here are my three picks. Please share yours.

Dr Daniel Siegel presenting a Hand Model of the Brain

Bozeman Science Video — 17 things to remember:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kMKc8nfPATI

Alternative “hand model” — using both hands!

How to learn major parts of the brain quickly

A LINK TO THE LAST THREE YEARS OF POSTS ORGANIZED BY THEME

PDF with headlines — Google Drive

YOUR TURN

Please share the coolest thing you learned this week related to science, engineering, or technology. Or, even better, the coolest or most important thing you learned in your life related to science and engineering.

This is your chance to make someone else’s day. Or to cement in your mind something that you might otherwise forget. Or to think more deeply about something dear to your heart. Continuity is key to depth of thought.