Thoughts
on the Brain, Learning, and Education
|
Thoughts
on the Brain, Learning, and Education |
" The brain is a pattern seeking device - it
is constantly looking for meaning. There are 6 major kinds of patterns; kids
need prior experience to recognize a pattern. I could recognize a teapot in
any country because I've seen a teapot & recognize it's pattern."
THE EMOTIONAL BRAIN; Joseph Le Doux (1996 Simon & Schuster)
"Our emotions drive attention, which drives learning, memory, problem-solving -- and just about everything else."
"While intellectual challenge (and even mild stress) can enhance learning, severe short-term and chronic stress shift us into a mode of operation in which we react to danger rather than think rationally about it."
"Just as continuous capricious accleration and braking can eventually ruin a car, so chronically fearful school / home environments can biologically diminish a student's ability to learn. A stressful school environment is thus biologically counterproductive."
Let's not destroy each other with language. Every putdown is about power & devastation.
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"Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful committed people can change the world. Indeed it is the only thing that ever has."
- Margaret Mead
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"The democratic problem in education is not primarily a problem of training children; it is the problem of making a community with in which children cannot help growing up to be democratic intelligent, disciplined to freedom, reverent of the goods of life, and eager to share in the tasks of the age."
- Joseph K. Hart.
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Your brain uses 10 times more oxygen than the rest of you.
There are 2 kinds of memory:
1) emotional
2) factual (recall)
Our emotional system runs the biases of our factual system
- Emotion drives attention
- Attention drives learning & memory
NOTES from lectures by Robert Sylwester
Bob Sylwester is Professor of Education at the University of Oregon, researcher,
author of A Celebration of Neurons: An Educators Guide to the Human Brain,
and speaker extraordinaire.
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