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New Brain Science and Age-Old Wisdom
10-22-2014
World renowned neuroscientist, Dr. Adele Diamond, has an important message for parents and educators: to improve students’ academic performance nurture their social, emotional, physical and spiritual development. Dr. Diamond’s extensive research in developmental cognition reinforces what many of us know intuitively: “If you want to have kids thinking well, they need to not be stressed, need to feel that they belong, and need to be in good physical shape.”
I was fortunate to hear Dr. Diamond speak at the recent West Vancouver TEDX Talks. She held the audience in rapt attention as she linked new scientific findings concerning the brain’s prefrontal cortex (PFC) with age-old wisdom on how to raise children.
Dr. Diamond’s research shows that the PFC is responsible for core activities called “executive functions” which are critical for reasoning, problem-solving, and decision-making. These rapid fire brain functions help us regulate behaviour so that we primarily avoid acting on impulses which we would later regret and generally undertaking actions which we have learnt are beneficial. Executive functions include basic tasks such as inhibitory control, working memory, and cognitive flexibility. School success often depends on students having strong executive functions because children with poor executive functioning are like “thorns in the teacher’s side – not staying in their seat, disrupting the class, and doing things that get other children upset with them.” Schools and families who value academic excellence understand the crucial role of strengthening these underlying executive functions.
Dr. Diamond calls on parents and educators to look back into our longstanding cultural traditions and recognize that in our quest for academic achievement we have sacrificed many of the activities that hone our minds through nurturing our spirit. She reminds us that for tens of thousands of years, across all cultures, storytelling, dance, art, music, drama and play have been essential parts of the human condition. She believes there are good reasons why these activities have been so pervasive and long-lasting – they train and challenge our executive functions. These types of activities “require forethought, planning, and perseverance even in the face of setbacks, creativity and flexibility when unexpected obstacles or opportunities arise.” They build confidence, develop motor skills, increase social cohesion, reduce stress and bring energy-sustaining joy. They seem to sharpen the mind and body so that cognitive tasks can be undertaken with greater ease and dexterity.
Whole child advocates understand that human beings are complex and have fundamentally interrelated emotional, social, physical, spiritual and cognitive aspects. The mark of true quality in terms of education comes through appreciating that the child is a complete and undividable person. Dissonance or stress in one area will be detrimental to the others.
One of Dr. Diamond’s most powerful points relates to the atmosphere needed for truly effective education. “Schools should be joyful. Then the children will want to be there. You learn more. Your brain works better. Your prefrontal cortex goes offline if you're stressed, even mildly stressed. So the more you stress children in school the worse their executive function is going to be and the worse their higher cognitive functions are going to work. They work better if they're not stressed, if they're happy. And you can do things joyfully or you can do things making somebody miserable. Why not do it joyfully? We tend to have this terrible notion that anything that's important can't be fun. And that's such a shame. School should be joyful. Why not?”
Schools that neglect art, play, physical activity, down-time and fun do so at their own risk. Dr. Diamond’s signature closing remark has a significance that parents and educators should take to heart. “Counterintuitively, the most efficient and effective strategy for advancing academic achievement is not to focus only on academics but to nurture all aspects of the child. While it seems logical that if you want to improve academic outcomes you should concentrate on academic outcomes alone, not everything that seems logical is correct.” Wise words to heed.
More information about Dr. Diamond’s research can be found at http://www.devcogneuro.com/ Zainab Dhanani can be reached at z_dhanani@yahoo.ca
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