Students Brains: Another road-building project

by Marion Brady    International Education Daily Archive    May 31, 2001

http://members.iteachnet.com/~webzine/article.php?story=20010531185720825

In an earlier article, I wrote about how dependent we all are on systems of organization. Without them, ordinary matters such as locating a name in the phone book, finding a cup in the kitchen, buying socks in a department store, using the controls on a car’s dashboard, would be far more difficult.

The one place where we seem least concerned with a system of organization, I argued, is where it matters most if our schools are to be effective—in students’ minds. In the years it takes to move from kindergarten through high school, total human knowledge, by some estimates, more than doubles. We meet the information explosion challenge by making textbooks thicker and seat-time longer.

Piling on more information, of course, simply makes the problem worse. It increases confusion, encourages superficiality of thought, and forces students to rely on short-term memory. Many, unable to cope, stop trying. Most who stick with it have relatively little to show for their effort a few months or years after graduation.

I intended to follow the column about the need for mental organization with one about how our brains actually systematize information, but trying to stuff a difficult idea into just a few paragraphs left me struggling. I'm still struggling. However, the matter is so important, and so neglected, that a poor explanation seems better than none. So, here’s a stab at it:

Imagine the brain as a highway system, with ideas as roads. Every student, with the help of parents, friends, and school, is engaged in a massive road building and map-drawing project. Everything the kid knows, really knows, will appear on the map. And everything he or she does, from filling in the bubbles on a standardized test to trying to promote world peace, will be directed by that map, right down to the last detail.

Good mental maps have certain characteristics.

First, the "idea-roads"criss-crossing the brain will differ greatly in size and in the traffic they carry. Big, general ideas like "pattern" and "system"will be superhighways. Small, specific ideas such as "haircut," and "broccoli"will be country lanes. The map will make the differences clear.

Second, the road system will be organized. In biology, for example, the road called "species" leads to the bigger road "genus," then on to "family," then "order," followed by "class" and so on, all the way to the superhighway idea called "environment."

Third, the road system will be integrated. Everything will connect to everything. Disconnected roads can be built, but they soon disintegrate. For example, students can be taught that in Japan, ha zu ka shi is part of the enryo syndrome. However, because for most of them this idea doesn’t connect to anything already known, it will be forgotten.

Fourth, for healthy people, the road building never stops. As new and old roads criss-cross—when ideas intersect—knowledge expands. "Moon" and "tides" are ideas. When someone realized that they intersected, knowledge grew. When a child connects temper tantrums with "time outs," knowledge grows.

The learning-as-road-building-and-map-making metaphor suggests certain teaching strategies (and raises, I think, important questions about education in America):

First, it says that big ideas carrying a lot of traffic—ideas that cut across many or all fields of study—need to be identified early and continuously emphasized. We’re not doing that now.

Second, it says that new knowledge must connect to something already known. What’s already known is far more likely to come from first-hand experience than from a textbook or lecture.

Third, it says that for a general education, the artificial barriers separating subjects should be removed.

Fourth, it says that the more ideas that intersect, the greater the insight. The question most frequently asked of students shouldn’t be, "What do you remember?" but, "What might (a) have to do with (b)?"

Finally, it says that the most useful thing kids can be taught is how their knowledge is organized. They can’t make use of maps they don’t know they have.

The current crop of reformers—those in Washington and in state legislatures pushing simplistic "standards" and high-stakes testing—don’t understand the problem. They just want to impose on the young the mental maps they consider superior—their own.

That’s an agenda driven either by naivete or politics. Neither is educationally acceptable. Like the rest of us, kids only trust and use the maps of reality they themselves have drawn.

Reform should concentrate on helping the young surface and refine their mental maps. Nothing else they can study—not reading, writing, arithmetic, not physics, philosophy, or anything else—will trigger a more powerful explosion of intellect and academic performance.

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