[Reading-hall-of-fame] Brainless Learning

[Jay Samuels]

Over the years, Tom has provided us with interesting and useful information.
I agree with his analysis that thus far brain research has not led to
important new ways to teach reading. The reading programs that I have looked
at that claim to be brain based turn out to be simply good pedagogy, and
nothing special. Jay samuels

-----Original Message-----
From: reading-hall-of-fame-bounces at lists.nottingham.ac.uk
[mailto:reading-hall-of-fame-bounces at lists.nottingham.ac.uk] On Behalf Of
tsticht at znet.com
Sent: Monday, July 26, 2010 11:20 AM
To: reading-hall-of-fame at nottingham.ac.uk
Subject: [Reading-hall-of-fame] Brainless Learning

July 25, 2010

Brainless Learning

Tom Sticht                                                                  
                                                                          
International Consultant in Adult Education


Today there are shelves of books that call for educators to base their
instruction on the (relatively) new science of the brain. Books based on
neuro-imaging of the brain call for brain-based reading instruction,
brain-based mathematics instruction, drawing on the right and left brains,
and on and on. Interestingly however, a large group of cognitive and
neuroscientists meeting in Santiago Chile in 2007 concluded that brain
science has little or nothing yet to tell us about educational practice
(see the Santiago Declaration online).


With this interest in brain science and learning, I recalled an early
experience I had in my professional training. In the early 1960s I was a
graduate student at the University of Arizona working on a Ph.D in
psychology. While there, I had an opportunity to attend a colloquium given
by a Dr. Beatrice Gelber. Dr. Gelber was by the time I heard her a very
senior scientist in the field of biological psychology.


One of the first things I (and other grad students) noticed about Dr. Gelber
was that she had a pronounced tic in her left eye, in which the eye
repeatedly blinked shut. We all soon understood why she had this tic. Her
special interest at the time of the colloquium was the behavior of the
paramecium, a one cell animal with no brain. Yet Gelber was apparently
training it in an experiment on learning! But to observe the organisms, she
had to look through a microscope for hours upon end. Over time, this had
apparently led to the tic in her eye.


In an online book (Shufflebrain: The Quest of Hologramic Mind) the late
Professor Paul A. Pietsch prepared a chapter entitled Microminds and
Macrominds in which he discussed some of Gelber’s research. He wrote:


Begin quote:”
in the 1950s an animal behaviorist named Beatrice Gelber
conditioned paramecia by the same basic approach Pavlov had taken when he
used a whiff of meat to make a dog drool when it heard the ringing of a
bell.


Gelber prepared a pâté of her animal's favorite bacteria (a single
paramecium may devour as many as 5 million bacilli in a single day; then
she smeared some of it on the end of a sterile platinum wire. She dipped
the wire into a paramecium culture. Immediately her animals swarmed around
the wire, which was not exactly startling news. In a few seconds, she
withdrew the wire, counted off a few more seconds and dipped it in again.
Same results!. But on the second trial, Gelber presented the animals with a
bare, sterilized wire, instead of with bacteria. No response! Not at first,
anyway. But after thirty trials--two offers of bacteria, one of sterile
wire--Gelber's paramecia were swarming around the platinum tip, whether it
proffered bacterial pâté or not.” End quote


Years after Gelber’s work which purportedly demonstrated learning in the
brainless paramecium, Eric Tytell published an article online in October
19, 2007 with the intriguing title: Learning Without a Brain. The article
has an equally enticing introductory paragraph:


Begin quote: “You don't need your brain to walk. You don't even need it to
catch yourself after you stumble. And now, it appears, you may not even
need it to learn some new skills. A recent report suggests that the spinal
cord itself, without the brain at all, is able to adapt to a new
environment – and possibly even anticipate how its environment has
changed.” End quote


Tytell goes on to discuss research that seems to suggest that the rat spinal
cord, when surgically separated from any connections to the rat’s brain, can
adapt to this new situation and learn to walk all over again, with no brain
involved.


Now all this is not to say that in the intact human learning can occur
without a brain. But it does raise the point that the biology of learning
is complicated, throughout, and possibly outside of, the brain and the
central nervous system. We have to be cautious in our reactions to claims
about the educational implications of the latest brain science.


As John Bruer, the philosopher of science and President of the McDonnell
Foundation, where tens of millions of dollars have been spent on
neuroscience,  has repeatedly admonished, we need to keep the findings of
neuroscience on the backburner, and instead pay attention to the research
on education that provides solid evidence for the effectiveness of our
instructional strategies and methods.


This is a no-brainer!


tsticht at aznet.net


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