There is no such thing as multi-tasking

You pre-GenXer's can stop feeling intimidated. The apparent ability of today's student to do six things at once is only an illusion. This is a key insight from the fourth chapter of “Brain Rules”: it is only possible for the brain to pay attention to one thing at a time.

"We are biologically incapable of processing (multiple) attention-rich inputs simultaneously."

Those who appear able to jump from English assignment to Facebook to iChat and back are actually disengaging and reengaging their brains at each shift, after the brain determines what is needed for the new task. This is highly inefficient.

The exception is that it is possible to do two things at once if one activity can run on 'auto-pilot' - that is, if you’re not really paying attention to it.

For example, a lot of people drive with their brain on auto-pilot, which is just fine until the person in the next lane does something unexpected. If you're going to talk on a cell phone while behind the wheel, you may as well have a couple of beers first.

But I digress.

Listening to music while studying might actually be a good idea. Apparently, this creates an association that the brain can later use to recall stored information.  An interesting implication of this principle is that a stimulating classroom environment – one perhaps, with a view of the outdoors – instead of encouraging daydreaming, is actually more conducive to learning than a room with four bare walls.

There is also a danger of force-feeding more information than the brain can fully process, such as might happen in some AP courses. (Did I say that out loud?)  It might be possible to retain information long enough to pass an exam, but how much will the brain retain a week later? A year later? (If the answer is "not much", how important was it in the first place? Something to think about.)  Further, the brain needs periodic breaks in order to digest any new information, which is why it is necessary to build time for reflection into the learning process.

A third insight is that the brain appears programmed to ‘tune out’ after about ten minutes – humans have a low threshold for ‘boring’.  So a good lecturer has to do something every ten minutes or so to reengage the audience.

Finally, and perhaps most importantly, the most effective way to get the brain to pay attention is to incite emotion – fear, laughter, surprise, etc.. The emotional trigger sends a message to the brain: “This is important! Remember this!”,  which is why events that are associated with intense emotion can be remembered in detail many years later.

Brain Rules and Empathy

Medina's third chapter talks about the enormous variations in how individual human brains are wired. Some of this is genetic, but much of it is experiential; the result of the constant rewiring of our brains as we process new information and experiences. Similar information is often stored in completely different parts of the brain from one person to another.

We have also known for years - since Howard Gardner, at least - that people can be 'intelligent' in very different ways (little of which, I feel obliged to add, is measured by standardized tests.)

The result of different brain wiring is that every person approaches and learns new information somewhat differently; hence, the need for 'differentiated instruction'. A good teacher understands this about his students, and that the way he learned best is not necessarily the best way to teach.

Teachers, therefore, need to have strong skills of empathy – the ability to see and understand things from another point of view.

We ordinarily don't see empathy as a skill - you either have it or you don't, to varying degrees.  (This perception is probably connected to the widely held belief that teachers are born and not made - most recently articulated by Bill Gates, who should be more careful about what he says.)

But the idea of 'learning' to be empathetic becomes more plausible once you get past the idea that this is not just another way of saying "being a nice person". (Although being nice helps.) Strictly speaking, empathy is the ability to understand what another person is thinking and feeling. 'Being nice' is what you might do with that information. For example, good poker players are, in a sense, highly empathetic - but not necessarily "nice".

Another important human variation is the rate at which the brain develops. If you've ever seen a third grade class picture, you were not surprised to see some students standing fully head and shoulders above others. Why would we think there isn't similar variation in brain development?

And yet we have an educational system that has been designed on the premise that every eight-year-old "should" be at the same place in intellectual development. Perhaps we need to rethink this.