Neuroscience and Education

Over the last three years, I’ve read a wide range of books on neuroscience, the plasticity of the brain, and the implications of all this research for educators and parents. Written by scientists, educators, and cognitive psychologists, these books span a wide range of topics and are sometimes more technical/scientific and sometimes less so. I’ve read tons of these kinds of books; the most notable ones are listed below:

Inside the Brain: By Ronald Kotulak

Magic Trees of the Mind: By Mariam Diamond

Reading in the Brain: By Stanislas Dehaene

Number Sense: By Stanislas Dehaene

Proust and the Squid – The Story and Science of Reading: By Marianne Wolf

Pink Brain, Blue Brain : By Lise Eliot

The Sexual Paradox : By Susan Pinker

The Tell-Tale Brain : By V.S. Ramachandran

I’ve also read some really interesting books by Jane Healy, an educator and psychologist, who writes about child development and the effects of the media. I found ‘Endangered Minds’ very interesting and provocative and ahead of its time (it was written in the 1990’s), and I also enjoyed ‘Your Child’s Developing Mind.’ However, I wonder about the scientific merit of these books, particularly Endangered Minds.

As a parent and an educator, I find these books absolutely fascinating, and I think that they have influenced both how I parent and how I teach significantly. Perhaps they have influenced my parenting more than my teaching, but either way, they have altered how I think about the brain and the process of learning.

So what are the big, enduring ideas that I have learnt from these books? I've listed some of the ideas I find most compelling below. The list is somewhat disjointed and far from complete, but it's a start.

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The idea of neuro-plasticity:

Genes matter. Heredity matters. We do come hard-wired with our own strengths and talents. Much of the research I’ve read points to the power of genes and heredity. However, what I find fascinating is that we can literally train our brains/minds to develop and strengthen certain neural circuits by spending a lot more time on activities that engage these circuits. If you want to be a good reader, spend a lot of time reading. If you want to be a good builder, spend a lot of time building. This is a fairly intuitive idea, and on some level, we already know this. However, the science behind this idea confirms that how children spend their time will, in many ways, determine what neural circuits they eventually develop.  This is not to say that we don’t come hard-wired with our own strengths and talents. We do. Yet, we can choose to grow our talents and minimize our weaknesses by spending our time wisely. A corollary to this is that students must actively engage in an activity to really strengthen a neural circuit. Merely sitting in a classroom won’t actually help a student learn; he/she has to use his brain to get those synapses firing.

·      
Spatial skills can be taught: This is a particularly provocative idea for me because I have atrocious spatial skills. I have never understood why spatial skills are almost completely ignored in formal educational settings. I was a stellar student in school precisely because I never had to engage in any kind of spatial work. Given that visual-spatial skills are the foundation of all higher-level math and science, I just don’t understand how or why they are ignored in formal educational settings. If spatial skills had been taught in school, I might have been diagnosed with a severe “spatial disability” and been given intensive remediation in this field. While it would have made school much less fun and somewhat humiliating, it might have helped me learn to drive properly, read a map, experiment more with technology, and put together IKEA furniture. I’m hopeless at all of the above. As a parent, I am determined to make sure that my kids get explicit instruction in this area.

There are biological differences between the ways in which female brains and male brains are hardwired, most likely a function of prenatal testosterone surges in males and differing brain sizes in males and females. However, when measured in young children, these differences are small for most cognitive areas; yet they become exacerbated by how children spend their time, and thus, by adulthood, they are very wide.  Again, the research suggests that how a boy or girl spends his time is very important. Video games (in moderation) are good for developing spatial sense. Reading is great for developing not just verbal-linguistic skills but also greater emotional intelligence (empathy, compassion). All boys and girls need exposure to a broad range of fields.

·      Aggression: The biological and hormonal basis of aggression is particularly interesting. I think that my understanding of men and boys has increased considerably as a result of this research. When I think back to the incredibly high levels of aggression that characterized my students, particularly the males, in inner-city Baltimore, I feel as though I understand where all that aggression came from. Living in a high-stress and violent environment can literally re-wire a vulnerable brain to become chronically ready to “fight – or –fly,” or in even more frightening cases, can lower levels of serotonin to the point where children lose their ability to feel any remorse or sympathy for others. This interaction between a hostile environment and a vulnerable brain can cause dangerously high or low levels of key neurotransmitters, resulting in either increased rage, which can trigger violence, or a lack of empathy, which can cause more cold-blooded killing.

·      When one begins to see human behaviors in light of neuro-development and biology, it becomes easier to be patient and compassionate. Instead of merely feeling frustrated with students who struggle, I try hard to consider how their brains are working. What are the specific ways in which this child is struggling? How can I break the task down to help him/her understand it? Similarly, with my own young children, it is much easier for me to deal with a tantrum when I consider that a three year old’s frontal lobe/pre-frontal cortex is insufficiently developed. Expecting her to be rational is somewhat unrealistic given the stage of biological development she’s in. 

·      Reading literally changes/re-wires the brain. The brains of literate individuals are significantly different from those of illiterate individuals. My favorite books were Maryanne Wolf’s “The Story and Secret of the Reading Brain” and Dehaene’s “Reading in the Brain” because they beautifully lay out the ways in which the brain learns to read despite not being hardwired to do so. Both books are a real tribute to the invention of writing and the supreme achievements of the reading brain, and as a reader and an English teacher, I found these books exhilarating and exciting. The process of reading, initially phonetic and eventually lexical, is absolutely astounding. And the power of words – how we remember them, understand them, use them, and change them is tremendous. Both books, however, made me realize just how challenging reading can be for a dyslexic student, and they helped me understand the need to revise my negative assumptions about struggling readers.

The research all shows that the brain is a “use-it-or-lose-it” muscle. I know from my own experience that there have been times in my life when I’ve used my brain intensely and felt very intellectually alive. In graduate school, for example, I spent all my time engaged in intense intellectual activity, and I felt as though my brain was in phenomenal shape. In contrast, when I’ve felt stressed and overwhelmed by personal/emotional matters, I’ve used my brain a lot less, and in the process, have actually felt significantly less intelligent. When I lived in NYC, I was overwhelmed by my father’s illness and death, and by the chronic stress associated with working when one has a very young child at home. My son was severely asthmatic as an infant and toddler, which didn’t make things any easier. As a result, I read much less, and I found that my concentration was severely impaired, my thinking became muddled and imprecise, and I sometimes found it hard to write even a simple paragraph. The depletive and dangerous effects of stress on the brain are very real, as is the effect of less use of the brain. It makes perfect sense: you use your brain and you build it up; you stop using it and those synaptic connections begin to die.

If there’s one thing I want to do for my children and my students, it is to inspire them to love learning and to use their brains as actively and enthusiastically as possible. I want them to have rich inner-intellectual lives.

Life in the Twenty-First Century

I’ve been thinking a lot about life in the 21^st century and what it entails. If, as I do, you live in places like Manhattan and Singapore, you have a particularly unique insight into what the 21^st century requires because these places have leapt into the 21^st century without glancing backwards. In contrast, when I visit Chennai, the city of my birth and childhood, I feel as though I’m travelling back in time to the more laid-back 20^th century.  (Every time I return to Singapore from Chennai, my husband cheerfully welcomes me back to the 21^st century.) But here, in Singapore, where the 21^st century is in full swing, the rapid pace of global change and the accompanying excitement and anxiety are palpable.

So, to begin with, what’s life like in the 21^st century? Here's a quick glimpse into our 21st century lives:

My husband, my kids and I are vacationing in idyllic Bali. We’re driving up from Ubud to Taro, to visit the elephant park and take an elephant safari. As we drive, we pass beautiful paddy fields and old (but live) temples. We’re driving through a landscape that is still entrenched in the peaceful and slow-paced 20^th century and hasn’t caught up with the frenetic 21^st century.
 

However, in our car, we’re firmly implanted in the 21^st century. My husband, an investment banker, is on a conference call with his team. The associates, analysts, and other bankers he is talking to are based in Hong Kong, Singapore, and Jakarta, and together they’re working on a deal with an Indonesian client.  He’s fully engrossed in this call, oblivious of the beautiful scenery outside our window. In order to keep our two kids quiet so that he can concentrate on his work, he gave them an i-pad, and they are busy watching you-tube videos of American shows (Arthur and Dora).  They, too, are oblivious of the lush green paddy fields and the beautiful Balinese-Hindu temples along the way. I look out the window and envy the families I see on the way; their lives seem so peaceful and natural, unencumbered by all this technology. 

I teach at a school that has embraced the 21^st century without a backward glance. While I admire all that this school is doing, it often fills me with a deep anxiety and a sense of physical dread. In many ways, I feel as though my profession (English teaching) is becoming redundant and obsolete. Do kids really need to read books and write essays in the 21^st century? I sometimes wonder if everything I’m teaching my students is really a waste of time. 

A little explanatory anecdote: I was talking to my sister yesterday. She’s starting a web-based company and is busy getting it set up. She has hired a number of photographers and copywriters for her company. The catch, however, is that the photographers, who are mostly self-taught, are getting paid $200(US) an hour, but the copy-writers, who have degrees from top universities and write really well, get paid only $12 to $15 (US) per hour.  The photographers are in big demand; they’re harder to find. The copywriters, on the other hand, are a dime-a-dozen. She got 10 responses to her ad for copywriters on Craiglist within the first hour.  It’s the images that count in today’s world. The words are peripheral, and no-one really values them anymore. 

Does written language count at all in a world dominated by visual imagery and technology? Am I wasting my time trying to teach students to write well and to analyze the effects of words and literary devices? Wouldn’t they be better off in a photography course? I think English teachers are going to be like Latin or Sanskrit teachers soon – an interesting bunch of people, who teach a largely useless subject. Of course, to counter this, the school I work at is trying very hard to introduce more media-related elements to our English courses. We’ve got to incorporate technology into all our lessons and have our kids analyze movies and images instead of just books. What happens then, to teachers like me, who just absolutely love books?

So, I’ve been thinking about what cuts it in the 21^st century, both as a parent and a teacher. Kids have got to be trained to be visual and spatial. Forget books and words; think images and electronics.

What should you encourage if you really want your child to be employable and successful in the 21^st century? Technology, technology, and more technology.
 

Fields that have always been science and technology driven (STEM) will continue to be lucrative and important. But the big news now is that even fields like the arts are all tech driven. Every field is going digital – there’s digital art, digital music, digital storytelling (movies, you-tube videos etc). Just learning an old-fashioned art form isn’t going to get you very far. A friend of mine who runs a gallery in Chennai (where they are still painting on canvases in good old 20^th century ways) said that globally, all the cutting-edge artists, are incorporating technology into their work. The art world is changing too.  And, of course, writing has to be technological as well – online newspapers and magazines, e-books, movies, videos, advertising – all our writing will have a technological component. Most of my friends have moved from paper-based books to electronic books. It’s just where the world is going.

So parents, if the goal is survival and success in the heartless and frenetic 21^st century, don’t bother with books. Don’t spend hours reading to your kids. Sign them up for photography classes and enroll them in i-camps where they can design video games and make movies. Let them spend more time in front of those screens so that they train their visual skills and begin to notice what happens in a picture or image. Buy them more video games and let them loose in this visual age.

What’s going to happen to people in the 21^st century? As their minds are deluged by an onslaught of information and visual images, and they’re never given breaks from work and socializing (you’ve got to respond immediately to texts, emails, facebook messages etc. no matter where you are or what you’re doing), people are going to become increasingly stressed, anxious, and hyper.  So, for those low-tech people who can’t keep up with the rapid pace of technological change, there is a field that will grow: nurturing and healing the technology-afflicted.  They’ll need more massages, more yoga, and more counseling than any previous generation. They are human, after all, and they do have physical bodies and emotions to consider. A virtual massage probably won’t do the job (who knows though? Maybe in the next 20 years?). They will probably still want to feel someone’s physical hands on their backs and necks. On-line counseling? Could happen, but I suspect that human healing will work best when it’s face-to-face.  High tech people will need some low-tech/high-touch healing.

So those are my thoughts on the 21^st century. I’m clearly not cut out for it, and as a result, I’m seriously contemplating leaving Singapore and moving to Chennai, where I was born. Then I can continue to live in the good old 20^th century.

"Leading them to the thresholds of their own minds"

I recently re-read poems from Gibran's The Prophet, and his words on "Teaching" really struck me. I think that, as a teacher, I can "teach" kids certain rules: grammar rules, ways to set up an essay or write a thesis statement,  vocabulary, and spelling. Yet, as Gibran says, real understanding is not necessarily something that's teachable. Ultimately, learning is an active and individual process that each learner must embark on himself. Understanding cannot be given or taught; it must be actively sought and found by the learner, and perhaps, that is why it is so very special. In Gibran's words, "the vision of one man lends not its wings to another man."

What can I give my students as a teacher? I think the most important thing I can do is share with them my own love of literature, language, and learning. If I can communicate to them the intense pleasure and satisfaction that intellectual work brings, perhaps I can inspire them to embark on their own learning journeys and "lead [them] to the thresholds of [their] own minds."

On Teaching

 Kahlil Gibran


No man can reveal to you aught but that which already lies half asleep in the dawning of your knowledge.

The teacher who walks in the shadow of the temple, among his followers, gives not of his wisdom but rather of his faith and his lovingness.

If he is indeed wise he does not bid you enter the house of his wisdom, but rather leads you to the threshold of your own mind.

The astronomer may speak to you of his understanding of space, but he cannot give you his understanding.

The musician may sing to you of the rhythm which is in all space, but he cannot give you the ear which arrests the rhythm nor the voice that echoes it.

And he who is versed in the science of numbers can tell of the regions of weight and measure, but he cannot conduct you thither.

For the vision of one man lends not its wings to another man.

And even as each one of you stands alone in God's knowledge, so must each one of you be alone in his knowledge of God and in his understanding of the earth.

East and West: Parenting Styles

When I read articles and books on child psychology and parenting, I increasingly realize how Western-centric all the available research is. With a few exceptions (most notably, Chua’s sensationalist book about tiger parenting),  all the child psychology and parenting literature available is written by Westerners, about Western kids, and for Western parents.

 Interestingly though, most of the literature presents itself as universal, and Western child psychologists seem convinced that their findings apply to all children around the world.  After leaving the US and moving to Singapore, I have been struck by how un-universal Western child rearing and parenting styles are, and I have also become increasingly aware of the very different value systems that inform Western versus Eastern parenting.

Singapore has a substantial Indian population, and since I’m Indian, I have easy access to this particular community. For months now, I’ve been informally polling Indian moms in the playground about their views on childrearing and parenting, and I’m fascinated by what I’ve found. Most of the moms are middle and upper class Indians now living in Singapore, and they have school age children under the age of 12. Simultaneously, I’ve been aware of the marked differences between Eastern and Western parents during parent conferences at the school where I work.

A big qualifier:  I'm making massive generalizations here based on a very limited sample, and there are bound to be many exceptions to these broad stereotypes and statements. In fact, I've worked with many students and parents that defy these stereotypes completely. I have encountered extremely intense and high pressure Western parents and very relaxed, laid-back Indian parents. Obviously, one should never pre-judge a child/parent/person, but nevertheless, I have noticed broad trends and am interested in exploring them further.

 Here are some of my findings:

1. “The Individual versus the collective”

This finding has been documented in numerous sociology/anthropology studies, and I see it very clearly around me. 

Western parents believe strongly in the idea that their child is an individual whose individual rights should be respected. They are often hesitant to critique, punish, or push their children too much because they believe that this will infringe on the child’s individual rights, and it may hinder the child’s development by squelching his creativity and preventing him from expressing his true self. They don’t want him to conform to a group, and they hope that he will be his own person.  They want to encourage choice and freedom, even if that means occasionally letting the child fail or letting the child challenge them/talk back because they believe strongly in the ideals of individuality, self-expression, creativity, independence and free will. 

In contrast, Indian parents believe strongly that their child is part of a family and a community, and that it is of paramount importance that the child realizes that every decision he makes and every action he takes has consequences for the entire family and community. They see the Western way as selfish: it is selfish to focus on the individual, and it is unseemly for a person to consider his own needs as more important than the needs of others. Each child’s life is inextricably linked to the lives of his parents, grandparents, and his community. He must understand how to respect others (particularly his elders), and how to act in a way that maintains harmony in the family and the community. Indian mothers seem far less concerned with self-expression and independence than they are with the child's ability to respect his elders and show consideration for the family unit. 

If the Indian child challenges his parents, speaks rudely, or slacks off academically, the parents don’t see it as a natural part of growing up, like Western parents do. They see it instead as selfish and aberrant behavior that is inexcusable. When asked what parents value most, almost all the Indian mothers I polled said “manners” and “respect.”  When one looks at Indian mythology and stories, these values of respect, loyalty to the family, and filial piety are evident everywhere. Children are expected to sacrifice their own personal feelings and desires for the sake of the family.

Where Westerners may view personal sacrifice  as oppressive, Indians view it as noble and good. One's duty or dharma, in Indian terms, often entails making sacrifices for the sake of the family and community.  For example, a child may want to play instead of study, but clearly for both the child’s own good and the family’s good, it is better for the child to study. Therefore, the Indian parent would feel absolutely justified in making the kid study, regardless of what the child wants. The stereotypical Western parent, on the other hand, would engage in a discussion with the child, and then second-guess herself, wondering whether she is somehow infringing on the child’s individual rights and squelching the child’s creativity by “forcing” him to do something against his will.

One of my Western colleagues used the word "oppressed" when she described the ways in which an Indian/Asian child is "limited" by his parents. In the Western mind, dictating terms to a child is oppressive because it is a violation of that child's individual rights. In contrast, in the Indian mind, it is absolutely necessary because it ensures that the child understands his/her role in the family and it keeps the child on a path that the parent believes will lead to future success and happiness. 

2. Approach to Academic Work: How much should a parent demand of a child? Is it right to push a child academically? Is it fair to the child? Are Asian/Indian children “beaten into submission” by their parents? Is pressure good or bad?

These are interesting questions to consider. The Western view is that parents should be involved in the child’s education and they should make sure that the child does his/her homework. However, at the end of the day, most Western parents will concede that their true goal is to make sure that their kids are “happy” and that they feel good about themselves. In this regard, they worry about striking a balance. They want to motivate and inspire their children, but they also want their children to be happy, and they want to praise and validate their children as much as possible.

The Indian view is quite different. As one Indian mom said to me, “happiness is all well and good, but it won’t get my child a job, and it won’t put food on his table when he’s an adult. He may think that watching television or hanging out with his friends is making him happy, but I know that in the long run, he will be happy if he does well in school and is able to succeed professionally.” Similarly, they seem less concerned with self-esteem. As another Indian mom, who admits to regularly berating  her son for not studying enough, said to me, “if he works very hard and does very well, he will develop self-esteem. So, I have no qualms about shouting at him for not working hard enough or not getting top grades. Self esteem is the reward of hard work.”

I wonder about two things when it comes to the amount of parental pressure that one exerts. Firstly, I think that there is a connection between the economic standing of a society and the degree of anxiety/pressure that a parent feels. India is still a developing country, and Indian parents are acutely aware of the global competition that they are engaged in. They constantly make comments such as “life is not easy” and “look at the competition.” They know that their own country will not provide their child with any back-up (social security/welfare etc) and that the playing field is still not entirely level for Indians. They are absolutely sure that the stakes in this game of education are very, very high, and that failure is not an option. So they push their kids like crazy.

 In contrast, Westerners have dominated the world for the last four hundred years. They have good safety nets: their kids can work at Starbucks and still live somewhat decently, they can rely on the state for public services of a reasonable quality, and they know that the world still favors them over others. In some ways, they can afford to consider “happiness” over “success.”

While part of the explanation for Asian parental anxiety versus Western parental complacency may be economic, a part is also certainly cultural.  Asians feel morally justified in pushing their kids, so they do. Westerners don’t feel as though it is morally right to push their kids too hard, so they don’t. Indians/Asians raise their kids to be obedient (“no back-chat allowed”) so their kids listen when they are told to stay home and study. Westerners raise their kids to challenge authority (“it’s good to question the system”) so their kids may challenge them when they are told to stay home and study.

3.  Western parents focus on Reading; Indian parents focus on Math.

This has been a particularly interesting finding. All Western books on early childhood stress the importance of reading aloud to your child, and then go on to cite numerous studies that show high correlations between “language immersion” and later academic success. They claim that the single most important thing a parent can do to improve their child’s educational outcomes is to read to the child on a daily basis. However, they say almost nothing about early Math skills.

Indian parents (and I think most Asian parents) are, interestingly, fairly relaxed about reading but totally obsessed with their child’s performance in Math. They may or may not read to their child on a daily basis, but they all immerse their child in a Mathematical world from an early age. Most of the Indian moms I polled began formal Math instruction with their children by age 4, and some by age 3. By the time their child turned 5, without any exceptions, they “sat with their child” on a regular basis to work through Math workbooks. They also encourage “Math games” such as chess, building  (lego) activities, and board games. 

They are big fans of the Singapore Math curriculum, and even the most liberal and low-maintenance moms admit to supplementing the school’s Math curriculum with frequent Math sessions.  The Indian moms I spoke with in Singapore uniformly believe that you cannot trust “International Schools” (read “Western schools”) when it comes to Math because Western schools don’t value Math sufficiently.

Where Western moms are convinced that reading to their child is the most important thing that they can do for their child academically, Indian moms are convinced that giving their child a solid Math foundation is their top job on the academic front. Read more about Asian moms and math here: Building a Math Rich Home: Learn from the pros. And read more on Asian moms and the stuff they do here: What Asian Moms Know

More to come on this topic!

What's in a Word?

I have always been fascinated by words. Where they come from, how they evolve, how they break down into smaller bits (roots, suffixes, prefixes, parts of a compound word etc.), and most importantly all the baggage they carry. Each word conjures up a host of associations, flavours, and moods. The very idea of connotation fascinates me. How is it that a word, one little word, can say so much? And how is it that we can all understand all that baggage, all the history, all the stories that each word tells?

Why are words so important? How do they define and delineate the parameters of thought? Why are our thoughts so constrained by a lack of vocabulary but so liberated by a rich and varied vocabulary? Although a number of linguists have supposedly proven that thought is possible without language, I’m not totally and fully convinced. I’ve read Steven Pinker’s books on this particular topic, and I’ve heard his view reiterated by a number of other linguists, but I’m still fairly certain that most thought, if not all, is possible only when we have the words to think with. And definitely, having the right words helps to clarify, organize, articulate, and understand thoughts in meaningful ways.  The greater our vocabularies, the more sophisticated and complex our thoughts can be.

Last year, my students did an exercise where they tried to come up with alternatives for highly clichéd words like “sad” and “nice” and “mean” and “happy.” What we found, as a class, was that our alternatives were not just fresher, they were always more nuanced. Sad is a generic word, but dismayed, on the other hand, describes not just sadness, but a certain type and degree of sadness. Similarly, melancholic, miserable, and depressed all convey very specific types and degrees of sadness. The broader the range of vocabulary, the more accurately and effectively we can think and the more clearly we can articulate a thought. Quite phenomenal, if you ask me.

Given the enormous role that words play in our ability not only to comprehend what we read  but also to think critically and deeply about the world around us, I think that helping students expand their own vocabularies is a critical part of teaching. A staggering statistic: the average school child acquires between 2500 and 3000 new words each year. Most of these words, obviously, are learned incidentally. This year, I’m teaching a seventh grade course, a ninth grade course, and a tenth grade course. It is amazing to me how many words my seventh graders do NOT know: words like portray, anecdote, and peril. Most of my ninth graders know these words. I’m always impressed by the size of my high school students’ vocabularies. The fact that in two years, my seventh graders too will have these sophisticated high school vocabularies is incredible, to say the least.

What are the best ways to teach vocabulary? I think that using a sophisticated vocabulary is possibly the most natural and effective way to expose students to new words. Instead of dumbing down my vocabulary when I speak with teenagers (or even my own, much younger, children), I very intentionally use complex and nuanced words. If students ask me what the words mean, I will discuss the words. If not, I’ll just use the same word often, with the hope and expectation that my students will learn the word incidentally, just from hearing it used in context on multiple occasions. Additionally, I think that direct instruction is probably important. However, I find it hard to make the time to teach vocabulary in an explicit way, and I also find that these teaching sessions are not as productive as the more natural method of merely using more complex words. Students may be able to define a word that has been explicitly taught, but they often have trouble understanding it well enough to use it effectively. They don’t get the word; they don’t get all the connotations, all the baggage that the word carries, until they hear or read the word used in context often.

As a teacher, however, I can only do so much. Vocabulary acquisition has to start early, and it has to start in the home. The words that a child encounters from infancy onwards will determine not just how well the child does on reading tests down the road but also the child’s ability to think and communicate. If there’s anything a parent can do for a child, it is to expose the child to the richest array of words possible.

The Stories We Tell

Over the last few years, I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about the impact that foundational stories have on people. By foundational stories, I mean those stories that most children in the culture are familiar with: the religious, mythological, and more contemporary stories that all children in a culture grow up hearing.  The more I think about the role that stories play in shaping a child’s understanding of self and society, the more I’m convinced that at a very early age (maybe 3 or 4),every young child already has a worldview based primarily on the stories he hears.

Take, for example, the stories that a typical child growing up in India hears. Even very young children hear about Rama, Lakshmana, and Sita, in the Ramayana. Through this story, they learn the tremendous importance of filial piety since Rama is revered for obeying his stepmother, Kaikeyi, without any questioning or resistance, even when she demands that he give up his kingship and live in the forest for 14 years. Rama is idolized for both obeying his stepmother without question and for ensuring that his father is able to keep his promise. The ideal son, Rama willingly gives up everything for his parents. Additionally, children learn about the responsibility and duty that siblings (brothers, particularly) have for each other. Lakshman accompanies Rama into the forest, and Bharatha only rules in Rama’s name. Finally, children imbibe a host of ideas about gender roles through this story: men fight, women need to be rescued, women should be chaste etc.

 Once an Indian child understands this basic storyline with all the values it carries, he will then encounter other stories through the Indian media, all of which reinforce and re-play these same themes and values. Every Bollywood story and Hindi soap will idealize the family in much the same way, and they will all emphasize and reinforce the centrality of these familial relationships. Without even realizing it, the Indian child, early on, will have been taught that the purpose of life is to uphold the family structure, no matter what the personal costs of this might be. Filial piety, unquestioning obedience towards one’s parents, a deep responsibility towards one’s siblings, and a certain patriarchal view of the world would have been etched in the child’s mind.

In contrast, the average Western child hears a different genre of stories. The stories don’t deal with the theme of filial piety; they centre instead on the individual, who must overcome obstacles to achieve an independent victory. Most Western children grow up either with religious (Biblical) stories, with fairy tales, and, if they’re lucky, with more contemporary classic Children’s literature. The Little Engine (that could) is not only kind but also courageous as she chugs up a very large hill so that she can help the dolls and toys get to the children on the other side of the mountain. Animal characters like Curious George and Franklin are the heroes of their own stories because they take risks, have adventures, and learn something.

 Even ancient Western myths like the Iliad and the Odyssey are about the individual’s quest for greatness. Biblical stories and parables also focus on Jesus’ life and his miracles. The New Testament is largely the story of an individual’s journey to help and save others. By the age of three or four, the average Western child has decided that the main purpose of life is to seek fulfilment and greatness on an individual level. You become great because you overcome obstacles as an individual, not because you make sacrifices for the sake of your family and community. Furthermore, the characters in all these stories tend to help strangers rather than family members and relatives. These themes of individual success are, of course, reinforced by the Western media in cartoons, movies, and sitcoms. Therefore, the worldview that the young child develops is then reinforced and strengthened as he grows up.

I often have conversations with my students about fairy tales, myths, and other foundational stories. How have these stories shaped the way we understand ourselves? How do they shape the way we understand the world and our place in it?  What value systems are embedded in each of these stories? What kinds of scripts do they give us for our own lives? We may think that children’s stories are merely for entertainment and academic enrichment, but I think that the role they play in socializing a child into his/her own cultural context is tremendous. Additionally, from a literary standpoint, these foundational stories often give us the original scripts for all later literature and film.  

Achieving Balance

It’s interesting that all children – whether they are toddlers or teens – tend to simultaneously need opposing things. For example, they need structure and predictability, yet they also need a considerable amount of freedom. Without structure, there’s chaos and kids tend to do nothing at all, yet without freedom, there’s a stifling of creativity and imagination. Similarly, they need high expectations and a little pressure/stress so that they really push themselves, but they also need a safe and nurturing environment where they feel comfortable taking risks and failing. They need guidance because when left completely to their own devices they tend to flail and flounder, but at the same time, they also need to be given choices and left to themselves so that they think creatively and learn to make their own decisions. They need teachers and parents who are simultaneously firm and nurturing, who are at once both “hands-on” and “hands-off.”

The more I think about it, the more I realize that achieving this balance is an important part of being a successful teacher. And it is not always easy. For example, I often wonder about how prescriptive an assignment/project should be?  And how democratic should my classroom be? How do I find the right balance between guiding students and empowering them? And what about the effect of grades: how much should I consider a student’s feelings/self-esteem when I grade a paper or give feedback on a project? How do I find the right balance between pushing a child to work harder and helping a child maintain his self-confidence and self-esteem? How much to critique/push versus how much to praise?

Similarly, as a mother, I find that I’m constantly trying to find a balance between holding my children close to me and letting them go. I’ve been trying very consciously to give my six year old son more freedom. And I’m trying hard to give him the time and space he needs to play creatively on his own in any way he chooses. Yet, I also want to make sure that he gains exposure to organized sports and music, and I want to help him improve his reading skills, so I enrol him in classes and work with him on his reading at home. What’s a good balance though? How much structure? How much freedom? As a mother, I find this balancing act particularly interesting because it has such an emotional dimension to it. Should one be a “free-range parent” who encourages lots of creativity and risks, sometimes at the expense of safety, or should one be a “helicopter parent” who hovers and protects, thereby squashing independence, creativity, and risk-taking? Obviously, the answer is to be somewhere in-between. The mothers I admire most are the ones who are simultaneously very involved in their kids’ lives but also very relaxed and chilled out about their kids. They know intuitively when to let go and when to hold on, when to encourage risks and when to provide safe support.

So, both in my teaching and in my parenting, I think I need to continue to seek balance between contradictory and opposing forces.

A Visual World

I just finished a two day workshop on ‘teaching in the technology age.’ The school I work at is going to distribute macbooks to all high school students in the fall, so we’ll be a 1:1 school in August. And we’re working on figuring out how best to use and manage all this technology in the classroom. I am simultaneously fascinated, excited, and terrified by the huge paradigm shift that’s occurring.  My own sense of fear and inadequacy makes me think of Socrates resisting the onset of literacy, and of all the thinkers and philosophers who resisted the mechanization of the industrial revolution. We really are on the cusp of a massive shift in the way people understand the world.

One of the major changes, of course, is the redefining of the Language Arts.  Since the world became literate, we’ve revered the printed word. When I began teaching English, I assumed that my students would read books and then write papers about them. We’d analyze literature and write interesting essays that probe the world that exists beneath the surface of a text. We would, as a class, pay daily homage to the power and magnificence of the written word. Yet, I’m not sure that this vision of Language Arts is true or relevant today. We process way too much information at far too rapid a pace to really have time for long, sustained narratives.  For most people in the “real world,” writing will merely be an accompaniment to visuals. From powerpoint presentations to Keynote presentations to podcasts and multi-media events, we now present all our information in visual and auditory ways. And even our stories are generally told visually – the number of people who watch movies far exceeds the number that reads books. And even books, for that matter, now come in electronic forms, fully equipped with visuals and audio, ready to be played on an ipad or kindle.

So in this brave new world, where the written word is just one of many ways to convey information, what should we be teaching students? Should we be asking them to write fewer literary analysis papers, and instead, to create multimedia presentations that analyze both books and movies? Should we be asking them to respond to podcasts and then create their own? Should we get them used to even more visual stimulation by introducing material using Keynote slideshows with musical accompaniments? Over the last two days, as I messed around with various macbook applications, I was extremely impressed by all the ways in which we can tell stories and convey information. Visuals obviously make a tremendous impact on the human brain; as someone once said, "a picture is worth a thousand words.” And when you add music to a visual presentation, you’re making an even bigger impact on the brain. The writing, generally relegated to a few bullet points, seems almost peripheral.

I was definitely impressed by the fast and flashy world of all this new technology, and I left the workshop feeling committed to trying out some of this technology in my classroom. Yet, the workshop also raised a number of questions in my mind. The basic premise of technology seems to be that faster is always better. My colleagues and I were impressed by how we could use this new technology to quickly access and share lots of information  as a class -- no more slow and deliberate writing on whiteboards. Is faster always better though? My brain needs time to process and incubate ideas, and I suspect that many of my students need that kind of time too. Also, I value the slow and deliberate process of reflection that is encouraged by reading and writing. Will a technological world allow for that kind of unhurried reflection? And will a fast and flashy visual world diminish the quality of human interaction? Will it cause some sort of yet-un-named anxiety within students? How are students going to cope in a world where they are literally deluged by information all the time?

I have one other big question as a result of this workshop. Many of the teachers at the workshop kept talking about the need for us to "prepare students for this hi-tech future." I fully believe that students have to be comfortable with technology, and I agree that a large part of our jobs is to prepare them for the future. However, I think that, as educators,we have a complex challenge on our plates: we need to simultaneously prepare students for the future and help them retain a connection to their pasts. Educational institutions serve as a connector between generations; we help students  understand the wisdom accumulated over time. Schools are, by nature, conservative institutions that change slowly and gradually so that we are able to stay connected to our pasts even while we get ready for the future. I, for one, am all for more gradual shifts. These radical and sudden upheavals are exciting but scary.

Nevertheless, I feel committed to learning more about technology use in the classroom, and my goals for this summer involve preparing my own keynote presentations (with music and effects) and designing assessments that involve a variety of media. This year, I made a few short powerpoint presentations, showed some You Tube clips to my classes, and had the kids do a couple of presentations that involved technology. Next year, I’m going to do much more.

Yet, I am, at the end of the day, a book lover. And I like the slow and unhurried pace of a book, and I, for one, love long and sustained written analyses.  Despite all the new technology, the human experience itself hasn’t changed: we are born, we grow up, we love, we suffer, we experience joy and sorrow, we grow old, we get sick, and eventually we die. That hasn’t changed. The essence of our needs hasn’t changed. And since we are still mortals, we can’t possibly sustain this frenetic pace of life. We need the natural world, we need downtime, we need quiet time, and we need human contact. We have to remember our innate needs, which have not quite caught up with all this rapid change.

Anyways, I clearly have a lot to think about and a lot to learn.

Does Memory Matter?

Does Memory matter? Should students ever memorize anything?

Before mass literacy became the norm, people relied entirely on their memories for information. Teachers had to lecture and “teach,” and students had to memorize information because that was how all information was preserved and transmitted. Obviously, with the emergence of writing and reading, people became far less reliant on the spoken word for information, for stories, for ideas. People didn’t have to remember things anymore because they could write them down and then refer to the written word.

 In his travel book Nine Lives, William Dalrymple examines the remnants of the oral tradition in India today and then asserts that literacy kills the oral tradition. When people become literate, they lose their ability (or inclination? Or need?) to memorize and recite thousands of verses of poetry that have been transmitted orally from one generation to the next. Similarly, the cognitive psychologist Maryanne Wolf, in her book Proust and Squid: The Science and Story of the Reading Brain, describes Socrates' fears as he watched the world around him transfom from an oral society to a literate one. Among other fears, Socrates worried that a literate world would suffer from memory loss. People would begin relying on the written word, and in the process, they would lose their ability to memorize and remember.

When the world begins to change in revolutionary ways, much is gained, but much is also lost. Clearly, the written world brought tremendous benefits to our societies. It enabled us to communicate across distance and time. It allowed us access to far more information than we could ever commit to memory. And it made the preservation and the acquisition of knowledge much easier. It also made knowledge far more accessible, and thereby democratized knowledge in ways unheard of before. However, a newly literate world also saw the loss of a whole way of life. The written word doesn’t have the same life and vibrancy as the spoken word does. When one speaks, one communicates through language but also through tone, intonation, gesture, and expression. There is something alive and warm about listening to a story or watching a play.  There is a social element to the spoken word and the oral tradition that is lost when one engages in the solitary pleasure of a book. And of course, as so many thinkers and writers assert, when one begins to read and write, one stops committing words to memory.

I watched my own son “lose” his ability to memorize whole books as he became acquainted with the written word. As a preliterate toddler, he memorized  his storybooks word for word because he still had to rely on his memory to access information and stories.  Of course, at the time, I was convinced that he was a genius, but after a little research on the subject, I realized that this was very normal toddler behaviour. However,as he slowly and painstakingly became literate, he no longer recited and remembered every word in his books. He relied much less on his memory, and as a result, his capacity to memorize seems to have rusted over time.  Now, as a literate person, he can just look at the book and read the words; he doesn’t need to remember his books.

Does research support this idea that literacy kills or harms our memory? Apparently not. The only study I’ve encountered so far is by the French neuroscientist Stanislas Dehaene, who claims that the opposite is true. In his book Reading in the Brain, he cites a variety of experiments that he performed on literate and illiterate women in Portugal and concludes that the literate people had better memories. However, while there is no scientific evidence to suggest that literacy harms our ability to remember, there is tremendous evidence that it eliminates our need to remember. Writing simply removes the necessity of memorizing.

Which leads me to my next point: if literacy eliminates the need for memory, then what does technology do? With all our gadgets – laptops, blackberries, cell phones, ipods, and iphones – do we ever need to remember anything? When I teach now, I can look up pretty much anything instantaneously.  As a kid, I used to remember people’s phone numbers, but now, there is no real need for me to do this. It’s faster for me to retrieve a number from my cell phone contact list than it is for me to retrieve the number from my memory. From phone numbers to historical dates to poems to mathematical formulae: the answers are all a click away. And with the assurance that all this material exists outside us, safely stored in words and numbers on our various gadgets, we don’t have to bother to remember anything. So,  in a world where we are all electronically connected all the time, is memory totally and utterly redundant? We have our electronic memories, so do we need our human memories at all?

With this huge shift from a print based world to an electronic world, we are even less reliant on our memories than we used to be. So should educators make students memorize anything? Is there any value in memorizing a poem? Is there any value in memorizing historical dates and scientific facts? We still make students do this kind of work on a routine basis. Kids have to memorize and recite poems and Shakespeare speeches. They have to memorize historical information and scientific facts.  Are there benefits to committing information to memory? Should we be asking kids to remember things for “closed-book tests and exams” or should all our assessments be open book and open laptop assessments? What is the connection between memorizing and learning? Does an English student benefit from memorizing a beautiful poem? Perhaps. I’m not really sure. I know that I ask my students to memorize very little. They are always allowed to use their books and their computers for assignments, tests, projects, and presentations. Yet, this is obviously a huge shift in education. For millennia, educators have demanded that students commit vast quantities of information to memory. But has memory now become an obsolete tool of the past?

Lighting a Fire

“Such fire in the heart of the twig!

Without being struck,

How will it ignite?”  (Kabir, Baahar Kyon Bhatke?)

Kabir, the 15^th century mystic poet, poses this rhetorical question, and then goes on to suggest that self-discovery is the means to striking and igniting this twig.  As an educator, I believe that Kabir’s question is central to the very purpose of education since an educator’s goal is to help students discover themselves and unleash their own potential.

As a high school teacher, I spend much of my time contemplating the very idea of learning. What does it mean to learn? And how does one learn most effectively? And, importantly, what is the connection between learning and teaching? Oscar Wilde once wisely commented that “education is an admirable thing, but it is well to remember from time to time that nothing worth knowing can be taught.” The more I ponder what it means to learn, the more I become convinced that learning is an active process. We cannot learn by being taught. When we learn, we must be the subjects (not the objects) of the learning process.  We can only learn by actively engaging with an idea or a problem, and then constructing and creating meaning for ourselves. Memorizing information is not learning; it may be useful, but I don’t really think it is the same as learning. To learn, we must understand and/or create.  If learning is in fact something that the student must do on his or her own, then what is the role of the teacher? And what is teaching? What is the connection between what I do in the classroom and what my students learn?

The first step towards effective teaching is gaining an understanding of what it means to learn. Once a teacher fully acknowledges that learning has to be active, that it cannot be passive, then the teacher has to cede much of the power in the classroom to students and create a classroom environment that provides students with opportunities to engage actively with texts, problems, ideas, words, technology, art etc. Popular educational jargon advocates that teachers should be the “guides on the side” instead of the “sages on the stage.”

When I think back to my most memorable learning experiences, I realize that many (most) of them occurred outside the classroom. I have vivid memories of warm summer days in Kodaikanal, when I was seven years old. Every afternoon, I would take my book and sit quietly under the shade of the big wide tree in front of our summer house. I’d open up to a dog-eared page and enter a magical world of enchanted forests and adventurous lands. I would slowly work my way through a couple of chapters each afternoon, and finally, a few days before our Kodai vacation ended, I finished that last chapter. Even today, I remember the exhilaration I felt as I read an entire chapter book independently for the very first time. I learnt many important things that summer: that I could read on my own, that reading was magical, that ideas and imagination are wondrous. I learnt new words and new ways of structuring sentences and narratives. No one taught me anything, but I learnt so much. Since that first book, I have had many, many intense learning experiences through my engagement with books, stories, and ideas. And, most often, I have not had a teacher guiding me through these learning experiences.

Much of my learning has come from my experiences. When I watched my father suffer and die, I learned powerful lessons about the human experience, and similarly, when I experienced the miracle of pregnancy and birth, I learned equally powerful lessons about life and humanity. One cannot be taught these things, but they are incredibly powerful, moving, frightening, and humbling learning experiences.

Through my travels and my various teaching experiences, I have learned much about people, culture, history, politics, language, and life. As a child, I understood the brutal inequities that characterize Indian society because I saw them all around me; I could see the stark contrast between the privileged life I led as a child and the tough lives that our domestic helpers lived. As an adult, I began to fully understand the ways in which privileged people like me cause and perpetuate these inequities. I began to see the mechanisms that cause and sustain these brutal disparities.

Similarly, I began to fully understand the politics of race and class in America when I worked as a teacher in a failing middle school in Baltimore city. I began to understand the rage that simmers and explodes in disenfranchised Black communities across America. And I began to see how institutionalized racism works to create a two-tiered world in the richest country on our planet.

And of course, as I supplemented these real world experiences with books and conversations, I began to understand these experiences more fully. I learn when I see, when I interact with people, when I read, when I think. That is how I learn. I know that for many people, learning occurs when they engage with the natural world, with a machine, or with objects. That is how visually-spatially oriented people learn.  Regardless of what or who one engages with to learn, the key to learning is the process of active engagement. Of reading, of thinking, of painting, of programming, of talking, of looking. We learn when we use our brains and our bodies to do something active. We don’t learn when a teacher talks unless we are really listening carefully and thinking critically about what the teacher is saying. If learning is, in fact, a process that occurs independently of a teacher, then what are teachers for? What’s our real role? What do we teachers need to do to facilitate the learning process?

Once a teacher begins to understand the nature of learning, she must alter what she does in a classroom. She must begin to focus not on her own teaching but on the learning process of her students. How does one do this? Is the key in the choice of topics and texts to give students? Is it in the design of activities and tasks for students to work on? Is it in the conversations (discussions and debates, for example) that one has with students, or, better yet, that one facilitates between students in the classroom? Is it in the feedback we give students as they work through sustained projects over time? Is teaching really about motivating or inspiring a child to begin that process of active engagement? And if so, how should a teacher motivate or inspire? By modelling a love of learning? By designing tasks that motivate and inspire? By rewarding effort and initiative? How should a classroom be structured to truly facilitate deep and thoughtful learning?

2011-03-22