This past weekend I read this article about an innovative (read: private) school in New York City that is taking current research in the field of cognitive neuroscience and applying it to pedagogy. As the article notes, the "Blue School" (founded by members of The Blue Man Group*), connects cognitive neuroscience to education theory and pedagogy to make students more informed of what goes on in their brains and the resulting behaviors and emotions that come of cognitive processes:
. . . young children at the Blue School learn about what has been called “the amygdala hijack” — what happens to their brains when they flip out. Teachers try to get children into a “toward state,” in which they are open to new ideas. Periods of reflection are built into the day for students and teachers alike, because reflection helps executive function — the ability to process information in an orderly way, focus on tasks and exhibit self-control. Last year, the curriculum guide was amended to include the term “meta-cognition”: the ability to think about thinking.
For children who are so young--around five or six-years-old--the inclusion of meta-cognition in daily classroom activities might seem odd. However, as we are finding out more and more, it is really never too young to start shaping brains. The neural connections that we create early on guide how we form attachments, respond to stress, function in relationships, remember memories, and fashion our identities. To encourage children to be aware that there is this thing inside our head "encased in darkness and silence" as David Eagleman says, that guides our feelings, emotions, and characterization of the world makes sense because it fosters a type of accountability, and awareness that six-year-olds are not notoriously known for possessing. Perhaps, cognitive neuroscience can help children to develop into more sophisticated and self-aware students, early on in their educational careers.
Of course there are still a number of logistical issues with injecting this type of philosophical--theory of mind, one might argue--and student-centered technique into the classroom from such a young age. Namely the issue of testing. Parents of children at the Blue School are advocating for more emphasis on testing as their children reach later grades. The fear is that the Blue School, which ends at 5th grade, will not equip students with the tools necessary to success in a more academically traditional school; however, the focus on process, goal-oriented behavior, group work, and meta-thinking, engage many of the markers that successful students will, later on in their career, display. Thus the balance between succeeding by external versus internal standards arises in this new approach to pedagogy and educational theory.
The appeal of this innovation in elementary school classes is one that stems from my own more traditional educational biography. In 5th grade I attached a public school on Staten Island well known for its academic success; however, we took the citywide tests in reading and math in the spring, and studied with a mind towards those exams throughout the school year. However, it is not really the exams or the material that I remember learning so much as the groups that we were placed into and worked with throughout the year. I remember my cohort, working with them on "close-reading" exercises and fractions and also the rewards of chunky apple classics books that he allowed us to choose from the blackboard when we were particularly successful. Attempting to bring together students in a process-driven (rather than answer-driven), self-oriented, way is not really new; however, in the decade and a half since I graduated from elementary school there is now proof that our brain is shaped and affected by how we interact with others, basically from birth. A school that tries to foster positive emotions and autonomy in young children seems to indicate that education is moving slowly away from the "teach to the test" model, which can be demoralizing, creatively bankrupt, and no fun at all. The question then becomes, however, what happens to students reared in these more progressive environments should they be forced to move from their intellectual havens into more test-driven schools. I'd like to see data on how adaptive students raised in a Blue School model are.
*The Blue Man Group was co-founded by a Clark University Alum, which makes me really happy.
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