[Reading-hall-of-fame] The Santiago Declaration, Neuroscience, and Education

[tsticht at znet.com]

April 28, 2009

The Santiago Declaration of 2007: Neuroscience Still On the Back Burner for
Education

Tom Sticht
International Consultant in Adult Education

The year 2009 is the tenth anniversary of the publication of The Myth of the
First Three Years by John Bruer (The Free Press, 1999). Bruer, president
since 1986 of the James S. McDonnell Foundation in Saint Louis, has
overseen the funding of millions of dollars of research on cognitive
science and  neuroscience, and in his book he reacted to what he saw as the
misuse of neuroscience in education.

For instance, in It Takes A Village (Touchstone Books, 1996) by the former
First Lady of the United States, Hillary Rodham Clinton, now Secretary of
State in the Obama administration she says, "The first three years of life
are crucial in establishing the brain cell connections. ...By the end of
three or four years, however, the pace of learning slows... The process
continues to slow as we mature, and as we age our brain cells and synapses
begin to whither away. ..With proper stimulation, brain synapses will form
at a rapid pace, reaching adult levels by the age of two and far surpassing
them in the next several years." (pp. 57-58).

But in The Myth of the First Three Years and other writings Bruer explained
that the findings of neuroscience do not support the claims made above for
early stimulation of infants and children under three years of age.
Regarding the claim that enriched early childhood environments causes
synapses to multiply rapidly, Bruer states, "What little direct evidence we
have – all based on studies of monkeys - indicates these claims are
inaccurate....The rate of synaptic formation and synaptic density seems to
be impervious to quantity of stimulation. ...Early experience does not
cause synapses to form rapidly. Early enriched environments will not put
our children on synaptic fast tracks" (Bruer, J. (Let’s put brain science
on the back burner. NASSP Bulletin, 82, 9-19.1998, pp. 13-14).  He also
states that the idea that more synapses mean more brainpower is not
supported by the neuroscientific evidence. He states, “Synaptic densities
at birth and in early adulthood are approximately the same, yet by any
measure adults are more intelligent, have more highly flexible behavior,
and learn more rapidly than infants" (1998, pp. 14-15).


In his writings of a decade ago Bruer argued that most neuroscience is
irrelevant for early childhood and in-school education. This was
subsequently illustrated in the 2003 book by Sally Shaywitz (Overcoming
Dyslexia, Alfred A. Knopf, 2003). In her book Shaywitz summarized brain
science research using magnetic resonance imaging that shows which parts of
the brain are most active during reading for both normal and dyslexic
readers. She also offered a considerable amount of advice about how to go
about helping dyslexic children and adults overcome their reading problems.
However, as it turned out, most of the recommendations for educational
practice in helping students with dyslexia came right out of work from over
75 years ago. For instance, in reviewing programs suitable for dyslexic
students Shaywitz refers to programs referred to " generically as
Orton-Gillingham (after Dr. Samuel Orton and his associate, Anna
Gillingham, an approach developed as a tutorial program for struggling
readers."(p. 266). These programs have their origins in the 1920's and
30's.


Shaywitz’s book is just one example of Bruer’s 1999 point that neuroscience
had little to offer educational practice. More recently, in an 2007 update
of that position, Bruer and his colleague Kathryn Hirsh-Pasek
(www.sciencemag.org SCIENCE VOL 317 7 SEPTEMBER 2007 1293) reported the
outcomes of a meeting of a distinguished international group of
neuroscientists and cognitive scientists convened at the University of
Chile in Santiago for a conference titled Early Education and Human Brain
Development. During the meeting it became clear that while brain science
has the potential to help us understand human learning, it does not offer
evidence-based information to guide education in the classroom.


To make this point about brain science in a strong voice, the participants
at the meeting drafted the Santiago Declaration, which is presently
available at the internet site for the McDonnell Foundation
(www.jsmf.org/declaration). The Declaration lists several  principles about
education on which their was consensus among the participants. It then
includes the statement that  “The principles enunciated above are based
primarily on findings from social and behavioral research, not brain
research. Neuroscientific research, at this stage in its development, does
not offer scientific guidelines for policy, practice, or parenting.”

In his earlier writings, Bruer noted that, "Truly new results in
neuroscience, rarely mentioned in the brain and education literature, point
to the brain’s lifelong capacity to reshape itself in response to
experience" (1998, p. 17). In The Myth of the First Three Years (1999) he
referenced work in adult literacy education to make the point that, "Adult
literacy programs provide additional evidence that acquiring and improving
literacy skills is not time-limited or subject to critical period
limitations." (p. 112). He says, "The limiting factor in vocabulary growth,
and presumably for some of the other things Verbal IQ measures, is exposure
to new words, facts, and experiences. The brain can benefit from this
exposure at almost any time-early childhood, childhood, adolescence,
adulthood, and senescence." (p. 177)

This is an optimistic understanding of the brain which holds up hope for
improving human learning and development across the lifespan. As far as our
brains are concerned, it is never too early, nor too late, to learn!

Tom Sticht, tsticht at aznet.net