Musings on "The Art of Changing the Brain"

 I'm a little behind in my reading. I've only made it to the low 50's, but it's all good stuff. As I read on page 51 of The Art of Changing the Brain:

"It is not surprising, then, that cognition also triggers our internal reward system. We enjoy real learning, and we want to learn."

It reminded me of a similar quote from James Gee:

"It should be noted that humans and

other primates find learning and mastery deeply, even biologically, pleasurable under the

right conditions, though often not the ones they face in school."
[http://mitpress.mit.edu/books/full_pdfs/The_Ecology_of_Games.pdf]
Since Zull insists that everything is biological, I'd say these guys agree.

I enjoyed the discussion of the four things brains use to survive - cognition, control, fear, and pleasure. When we are trying to make an environment conducive to learning, we really have to keep these things in mind. Zull stated earlier in the book that people are always learning; they just might not be learning the things in your syllabus. It gets back to the kinds of motivation people have for learning. I know plenty of students who are most interested in gaming the system. They are "learning" how to get the grades, but they may not be learning much about the subjects in which they are enrolled. These students are finding a way to control their school environment because, in many cases, what they are being told they will learn in the grand opening statements of the syllabus are not the things they are being held responsible for. It's a common disconnect in education. An instructor states that they want the students to learn critical thinking and then gives a bunch of multiple choice tests over content. Why should the students give critical thnking a second thought in that class? Their very pragmatic brains figure out that they just have to memorize stuff.

I also enjoyed his approach of looking at the evolution of the brain to help understand why we think and process things the way we do. Fear and pleasure are just things we are going to have to deal with in teaching and learning. Insisting that those approaches aren't "scientific" or that we should be able to "get past it" or be "totally rational" is probably not realistic. People have emotions and feelings, especially in our society where we put so much value on education. Our self-esteem may be very wrapped up in how well we do in school, so learning becomes a tangled mess. I'm just happy to know that learning is somehow tied to pleasure. Otherwise, I think we would be sunk.