Schools as Brain Training Hubs?

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In the post Top 10 Brain Train­ing Future Trends I asked for sug­ges­tions to refine our pre­dic­tions for the 2007–2015 peri­od. A good num­ber of peo­ple con­tributed, and the win­ner is…

Scott Spears, retired pub­lic schools superintendent.

His prediction: 

“Pre­dic­tion 11: The notion of school­ing will be struc­tural­ly dra­mat­i­cal­ly brain fitness trendsaltered through the use of diag­nos­tics relat­ed to the acqui­si­tion and improve­ment of basic cog­ni­tive skills (such as brain pro­cess­ing speed, atten­tion, mem­o­ry, and sequenc­ing), along with pre­scrip­tions employ­ing emerg­ing brain fit­ness soft­ware exer­cis­es, begin­ning in the ear­li­est grades and pro­gress­ing through high school.

Schools will be struc­tured around the acqui­si­tion of foun­da­tion­al cog­ni­tive skills, relat­ed phys­i­cal fit­ness to sup­port brain fit­ness, stu­dent aware­ness and knowl­edge of brain func­tion and respon­si­bil­i­ty for one’s own fit­ness. Schools will be much more organ­i­cal­ly struc­tured along the learn­ing needs of indi­vid­u­als, will be a com­mu­ni­ty repos­i­to­ry and asset for access to con­tin­u­ing brain and phys­i­cal fit­ness pro­gram­ming, and will con­tin­ue to pro­vide impor­tant con­tent knowl­edge acqui­si­tion expe­ri­ences deliv­ered through inte­grat­ed expe­ri­en­tial learn­ing, cus­tom-designed for the indi­vid­ual learn­er, and vary­ing by time and place as needed.

Group learn­ing gaps will close as the play­ing field lev­els in the acqui­si­tion of the basic cog­ni­tive skills required for high lev­els of suc­cess and learn­ing. “Spe­cial edu­ca­tion” as such will first dis­ap­pear in the mid­dle and lat­er grades as stu­dents receive ear­ly inter­ven­tion for cog­ni­tive skill devel­op­ment and as the pletho­ra of cur­rent­ly diag­nosed men­tal dis­or­ders are bet­ter under­stood as brain func­tion issues that can either be pre­vent­ed or reme­di­at­ed through neu­ro­science-based inter­ven­tions, and will final­ly entire­ly dis­ap­pear as a func­tion of the design of indi­vid­ual learn­ing plans for every student.

The nature of school­ing is thus lib­er­at­ed from the cur­rent mod­el of empha­sis on con­tent acqui­si­tion to become more focused on the teacher-stu­dent inter­face of inter­est-direct­ed learn­ing under­gird­ed by the skills nec­es­sary for high-order think­ing and learning.”

When I con­tact­ed Scott to inquire about the main obsta­cles for this pre­dic­tion to come true, he responded:

“The obsta­cles are many because this is such a dis­rup­tive, new tech­nol­o­gy that is dif­fi­cult to explain to so many in edu­ca­tion who have no “frame” beyond what they believe about teach­ing and learn­ing from their under­grad­u­ate preparation.”

Scott: many thanks for your thought­ful com­ment. We will mail you a hard­copy of our Mar­ket Report titled The State of the Brain Fit­ness Soft­ware Mar­ket 2008. Look­ing for­ward to more of your contributions! 

Posts relat­ed to this prediction:

- Learn­ing & The Brain: Inter­view with Robert Sylwester

- Brain Con­nec­tion: Eric Jensen on Learn­ing and the Brain

- Are Schools (Cog­ni­tive­ly) Nutri­tive for Chil­dren’s Com­plex Thinking?

Reader Interactions

Comments

  2. Terry Gingras says

    Yes! Stu­dents will direct­ly learn how to use their brains rather learn­ing indi­rect­ly by mem­o­riz­ing con­tent. I sin­cere­ly hope this hap­pens at least in time for my grandchildren.

  3. Alvaro Fernandez says

    Ter­ry: you raise a great point, the num­ber one skill for stu­dents (mean­ing, us all) to acquire is pre­cise­ly learn­ing how to learn. I hope it hap­pens in time for my daughter…the real­i­ty, though, is that as a par­ent I can do much myself. We don’t need to believe schools are the only agents of teaching.

  4. Chris Elliott says

    Scot­t’s pre­dic­tion dove­tails with a “Neu­ro­science of Edu­cat­ing” sem­i­nar that was host­ed at the Salk Insti­tute in San Diego recent­ly (link below).

    There was a dis­cus­sion of ‘learn­ing phe­no­types’ that can lead to clin­i­cal­ly val­i­dat­ed indi­vid­ual learn­ing plans in the future. How­ev­er, school admin­is­tra­tors and teach­ers also men­tioned that insti­tu­tion­al bar­ri­ers to change are quite high — plus social bar­ri­ers like par­ents who pre­fer their chil­dren learn their ‘ABCs’ they same way they did 20 years ago.

    http://thesciencenetwork.org/programs/brainsrus2008/

  5. Alvaro Fernandez says

    Chris, thank you for shar­ing that link and infor­ma­tion on the Salk event.

    Per­haps the obvi­ous short-term oppor­tu­ni­ty is for some char­ter-schools to include and research in prac­tice a more holis­tic brain-focused approached?

  6. Chris Elliott says

    Alvaro,

    Char­ter schools would prob­a­bly be more like­ly to “take the leap” into a holis­tic brain focused learn­ing approach. I think a rea­son­able way to start is to intro­duce work­ing mem­o­ry exer­cis­es as part of the week­ly class­room sched­ule — I sus­pect a side ben­e­fit will be improved impulse con­trol, as there is evi­dence that improved work­ing mem­o­ry enhances impulse con­trol in chil­dren (and prob­a­bly adults too!)

  7. Alvaro Fernandez says

    Hel­lo Chris, I agree. Work­ing mem­o­ry train­ing could be very use­ful, either com­put­er-based or with class­room-based men­tal arith­metic led by the teacher, for example. 

    Did you see our arti­cle last year that said:

    “Just today we found out that Sharp sums in the head aim to blunt impact of TV, on a top­ic we have been dis­cussing for a few weeks with sev­er­al of our sci­en­tif­ic advi­sors. We quote:

    * “Gilles de Robi­en, the Edu­ca­tion Min­is­ter (in France), has ordered chil­dren to car­ry out between 15 and 20 min­utes of cal­cul men­tal (men­tal arith­metics) every day from the age of 5.
    * Mr de Robi­en moved after a report from the French Sci­ence Acad­e­my said that chil­dren who prac­ticed sums in their heads had bet­ter mem­o­ries and quick­er brains.
    * Ques­tions for the final year of French pri­ma­ry school
    * Cal­cu­late in your head
    1. Half of 48, 72, 414, 826 and 1,040
    2. Three times 41, 52, 109, 212 and 503
    3. A third of 12, 66, 93, 309, 636 and 3,024
    4. 76–9, 987–9, 456–19, 497–19 and 564–29
    5. 15×4, 25×4, 30×4, 35×4, 40×4 and 45×4″

    https://sharpbrains.com/blog/2007/01/25/lifelong-learning-literally-neuroplasticity-for-students-boomers-seniors/