The Collision Between Left-Brained Schools and Right-Brained Kids
From the book, "Right-Brained Children in a Left-Brained World: Unlocking the Potential of Your ADD Child"
by Jeffery Freed and Laurie Parsons
Excerpt (as originally shown at the Mining Co)
published by Simon and Schuster c1997 Hardcover, $23.00
The problem [ADD] has been around ever since teachers have attempted to teach students subjects that didn't interest them. In most cases, it should be described not as a learning disability but as a teaching disability.
-Ronald D. Davis, The Gift of Dyslexia
Both our society and the world in general are becoming more visual. But many of our institutions, particularly our schools, have not kept up.
-Thom Hartmann, Beyond ADD
The misery the child may suffer while trying to conform to verbosely dominated schools can only be imagined by those who have themselves suffered the "Alice in Wonderland" experience, the experience of being in a place where nothing can quite be put together to make sense.
-Dr. John Philo Dixon, The Spatial Child
Why are we facing such a crisis in education? I would argue that our left-brained American schools have rarely placed an emphasis on creative, critical thinking. Our schools have historically churned our graduates who- while strong on regurgitating information- lack problem-solving skills. American children are taught to conform rather than challenge authority; the result is they often lack the ability to make connections and think in fresh, inventive ways. The traditional American school, with its emphasis on order, drill, and repetition, probably did a respectable job educating children at a time when kids were also left-brained, less hyperactive, and not so overstimulated. The problem is that students today are fundamentally different: Our classrooms are being flooded by a new generation of right-brained, visual kids. While our school system plods along using the same teaching methods that were in vogue decades ago, students are finding it more and more difficult to learn that way. As our culture becomes more visual and brain dominance shifts to the right, the chasm widens between teacher and pupil. Our schools are no longer congruent with the way many children think.
When you take a historical look at education in America, you find that, sadly, our system was founded with the goal of creating a society of dutiful, obedient foot soldiers, based on the German model. Thom Hartmann makes a persuasive case for this in his insightful book Beyond ADD. He takes us to early nineteenth-century Prussia (now Germany), renowned for its merciless and efficient army- until the Prussian army suffered a staggering defeat at the hands of Napoleon. This so shocked the leaders of Prussia that they went on a mission to find out why their soldiers had gotten so soft. German philosopher Johann G. Fichte, in his "Address to the German Nation," indicted Prussia's schools system, saying schools had failed to produce compliant pupils. These brash, undisciplined students, he asserted, went on to become disobedient and rebellious soldiers.
In 1819 the king of Prussia established a universal compulsory school system with the goal of producing dutiful children who would follow orders and later become winning soldiers. This strategy worked, at least initially. Over the next five or so decades, Prussia became a leading industrial and military power, due largely to an efficient, although uninspired, workforce. Prussia became the object of world envy, with governments sending representatives overseas to study what it was doing right. Horace Mann, one of the most influential leaders in American education, was among those summoned to Prussia; he returned raving about how Prussia's disciplined school system could be useful in America to cure social ills, tame the Wild West, and provide quality workers. Not surprisingly, American industrial leaders embraced the concept of a system that would provide colonies of compliant worker bees to labor in factories and on railroads. In the words of Hartmann, "So began the dumbing down of America."
As we know, Germany, model for the American education system, was paying a price for its short-sighted educational priorities. The same system that produced meek, compliant children also produced meek, compliant adults so desperate for leadership that they embraced the fanaticism of Adolf Hitler. They were wired from childhood to look the other way when faced with the horror of the Holocaust. Germany's defeat was caused by the "tricks of schoolmasters." And theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer claims that the defeat of the German army in World War II was the "inevitable product" of the German educational system.
11 Oct 2009, 10:25 pm
