The Eye altering alters all.
–William Blake
The mind is its own place and in itself
Can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven.
–Milton
What’s Wrong with this Picture?
I cut the lights and pointed at the screen with a nerf ball.
“So today, ladies, we’re going to start class by watching a short film.” I said.
I turned to gently toss the ball at Casey.
“Now in this video, you are going to see two groups of people. People in white shirts tossing a basketball back and forth, and people in black shirts tossing a basketball back and forth.”
I motioned to Casey to toss the ball back.
“Your task,” I continued. “Is to count how many times the people in the white shirts pass their basketball.”
I rapidly threw the ball behind my back at a startled Keating, who didn’t quite catch it.
“And the challenge,” I told them. “Is that the people are moving all around and throwing the ball over other people, bouncing it off the floor, with nobody ever standing still. And what counts as one pass is this.” I motioned to Keating to toss it back. “That’s one.” I said and bounced the ball to Katherine. “That’s two. Is everyone clear on what you are trying to do as you watch this film?”
I paused to confirm that heads were nodding in understanding and then started to walk over to my computer to press play.
“Oh,” I said. “And for those of you who have done this before, please keep quiet while we’re watching so you don’t spoil it for those who haven’t.” I pressed play and the video did its thing.
Then, as I had for years now, I slowly and deliberately walked around the room, pointing at each individual girl and asking “How many?”
“Fourteen…Fifteen…Seventeen…” came the responses, and when I got to the last girl and she said “Twelve,” I raised my hand. “How many saw the gorilla?” I asked.
The room erupted.
“Gorilla???!!…Yeah, I wondered what that was all about…What do you mean??…Gorilla? WHAT gorilla??…You mean you didn’t see it?!…”
I went to the front of the classroom and raised my hand for silence.
“Let’s watch it again, and this time, don’t try to count how many times the ball is passed.” I told them.
We did, and this time, those individuals who had not seen the gorilla walking through during the middle of the film beating its chest were even more incredulous.
“Oh my god, how could I have missed that?” declared Caroline.
“Shall we try another one?” I asked. “A little harder one?”
The loud chorus of yesses told me I had them hooked.
“So this next one,” I said. “I’m going to show you a picture for several seconds, and you have to determine what’s wrong with it.” I pressed the play button, and everyone else stared intently.
“So, what’s wrong with it?” I asked.
Most of the hands in the room went up. I motioned at Jamie.
“There’s a tree in the middle of the river.” She declared confidently.
“Nope.” I replied.
The show of hands faltered.
“The water’s not moving the right direction?” Mehek offered tentatively.
I shook my head. “Want to try again?”
There was an even more vigorous chorus of yesses, and I showed the picture again, to the same results.
“Ready to see what’s wrong?” I asked them.
They all gave a mixture of nods and various vocalizations to the affirmative, and I pressed the “reveal change” button on the video.
Again, the room erupted.
“What??…The rock disappears??!…How is that possible?…”
“Watch the bottom right corner of the picture this time?” I told them, hitting the play button again to show the bolder slowly fade away.
There were lots of “how could I have missed that?” as I walked back up to the front to continue the lesson.
“Ladies,” I said. “Welcome to the brain!”
Food, Sex, & Safety
If I could wave a magic wand, I would make it a foundational requirement that before any educator at any level was ever allowed to teach, they must have taken a neuroscience class. Not the educational psychology class that is the standard licensing requirement in most of this country. A course in neuroscience. Because if a teacher does not comprehend and fully appreciate the workings of the organ that lies at the very heart of this profession’s primary endeavor, it is simply not possible to be authentically engaged in the classroom. Put bluntly, no one can adequately fulfill the keystone niche of teaching without employing a full understanding of the tension between the brain’s plasticity and its hardwiring.
That is because the human brain is itself a completely 50:50 blend of genes and environment, hardwiring and plasticity.1 In fact, this division is physically built into the very structure of the brain, with the left-hemisphere nearly uncompromising in its conservation of its neural pathways while the right-hemisphere readily adapts its pathways to meet demanding change. It is why, for example, victims of strokes in the left-hemisphere, where language is located, can sometimes relearn to communicate (the right-hemisphere adapts to take over the job) but victims of stokes in the right-hemisphere can refuse to believe that appendages once controlled by this hemisphere are parts of their bodies anymore (the left-hemisphere cannot change to take over the job of seeing them).2 In fact, because a right-hemisphere stroke victim preserves much of the functions such as language which we associate with being human, right-hemisphere strokes are significantly underdiagnosed.3
Learning, of course, is one of the brain’s most plastic processes as new neural synaptic connections are formed, others pruned, and even some additional neurons actually generated in response to changes in the environment, and it is why, as noted earlier, every person’s brain is wired with his, her, or their own unique neural pathways. Learning is so plastic in its character and our brains “so sensitive to external inputs that their physical wiring depends upon the [very] culture in which they find themselves.”4 However, the methods the brain actually uses to make learning happen are governed by some of the brain’s most genetically controlled hardwiring, placing significant boundaries on what can and cannot happen during the learning process, and it is these boundaries that explain why some educational techniques are highly effective while others are not (a topic we will return to later in this chapter).
First, though, we need to have a better understanding of the origin of these constraints if we are to fully appreciate their impact on teaching and learning, and to do that, we have to start by recognizing that the organ we all possess in our heads evolved just like every other part of our bodies and that the environmental forces of natural selection through which this happened were very different from the world we live in today. The human brain evolved during a period of tremendous ecological upheaval and instability as the climate dried and tropical jungle gave way to open savannah in Eastern Africa,5 and as a consequence, it became very good at rapidly solving new, immediate problems related to survival—i.e. food, sex, & safety—and it did so in near constant physical motion (the average early human traveled 12 miles or more a day).6
In addition, the part of the brain responsible for all of this was basically just layered by evolution onto the two previously inherited brains: the brain stem which we have in common with any animal with vertebrate and the limbic system we share with every other reptile, bird, and mammal. To top it all off, as any pre-K or middle school teacher can tell you first hand, the three don’t always communicate well together, and in fact, much of what the brain does is well below the level of self-consciousness (e.g. the signal for moving your hand to scroll through these pages leaves your brain to tell your hand to move before the signal making you consciously aware of your decision to do so is sent!).7
That is why, from the perspective of teaching and learning, “if you wanted to create an education environment that was directly opposed to what the brain was good at doing, you probably would design something like the classroom,”8 and the bottom line is that much of teaching and learning that take place in our schools is often ineffective at achieving any real mastery because it simply ignores how our brains actually work.
To become more authentically engaged teachers, then, we need to have a richer understanding of the human brain and its inner workings. But this project is not a course on neuroscience; hence, I am going to limit my discussion to only the three key things the brain does that most directly impact learning: perception, attention, and memory.
Light a Candle 