Randy W. Green, Ph.D.

“In is in fact, nothing short of a miracle that the modern methods of instruction have not yet entirely strangled the holy curiosity of inquiry…

It is a very grave mistake to think that the enjoyment of seeing and searching can be promoted by means of coercion and a sense of duty.”

Albert Einstein

Our system of education is broken.  There has been much written about why and how, and in attempting to shed some light on this phenomenon, several issues have been examined.  They include: (1) The notion of “teaching to the test”, (2) “Norm-referenced” verses “criterion-referenced” performance (i.e., how you compare to other students, which is the default yardstick in education leading to the “curved grade; this, as opposed to how you compare to a criterion of achievement); (3) Advantages and disadvantages of different types of schools—public, charter, private, religious, and so forth; and (4) A plethora of different methods used to educate—then test—children.  

Most education targets what we call the “left-brain”—the part that controls logical, ordered mental processing of information— math, science, reading.  Attention is almost exclusively on bits of information that we can absorb into our brains.  Since we have two sides to our brain, there is also “right-brain” functioning.  This is where creative expression lives– -singing, dancing and other artistic pursuits.  Developing this part of our brains requires a body-based awareness or the ability to attend to somatic experience in creating outcomes.  “Somatic” experience is information we get from our senses—visual, auditory, kinesthetic.  Ideally, a system of education would include development of both left and right brain functions.  But this is rarely the case….

Have you ever noticed that there are people in the world who perform exquisitely to produce the outcomes they desire; and that some of those outcomes are extraordinary?  They may be athletes or brilliant doctors; architects, scientists, chefs, astronauts and pilots; accountants and investors; playwrights and artists; or landscapers and builders.  Though these individuals embody a wide variety of fields and interests, they do share something in common: they manifest a pattern of body-mind awareness that is well ingrained within them.  When it comes to making a myriad of decisions, they have learned to integrate cognition with direct sensory information that they process prior to taking action.  Body-mind awareness allows for a fuller, richer experience because information from the senses is considered as important—if not more important—than relying solely upon cognition or the recollection of memorized material. 

Body based awareness—the ability to attend to sensory data in creating outcomes or making decisions– is often considered intuitive and therefore less reliable or valid than cognitive information when it comes to making decisions.  Nothing could be further from the truth!  How many times in your life have you felt stuck and didn’t know what choice to make, even though you believed you had considered the situation mentally, using all the information available to you?  When an elite performer becomes stuck in the course of taking action, he or she brings the sensate aspects of experience to bear that allows the process to continue, and a creative choice is generated.  Remember when pilot, Chesley “Sully” Sullenberger, landed a jet plane in the Hudson River?  How about when something unexpected occurs during an operation and the doctor has to “get creative” to save the patient; or a builder that encounters an unforeseen stumbling block and needs to use “gut instinct” to make modifications that allow him to finish the job?  

By and large, what is most troubling, in my professional opinion, is the diminutive role of right-brain learning and its applications.  Inspiring children to attend to somatic signals in the system is not something that is typically a part of educational curriculum.  Integrating your brain with your body, in fact, is not considered very important.  Instead, the focus of American public school education is inculcating left-brain function—cognitive education, memory of facts and formulae.  The target is producing future members of a work force who are rewarded for using their brains well, and controlling their bodies.  Accordingly, students are taught the importance of holding still for long periods of time and listening to what a teacher is saying.  Directly or otherwise, we’ve learned that the most successful people are left-brain oriented; and over time we stop paying attention to the largest part of who we are – the signals in the system (i.e., sensory information) -and instead, learn to find a chair, sit still and focus on what others are telling us is more important, feeding the left brain with information.  

Yet, isn’t it ironic that people will pay millions of dollars to purchase rare artwork, an expression of right-brain activity?  How much do you think memorizing the Gettysburg Address or solving a quadratic equation would yield?  

Okay, now… let’s not go there!  It is not being suggested that left-brain learning is unimportant and should be replaced with singing and dancing.  Obviously, learning the “three R’s” in school is vital to many tasks and future endeavors.  The contention here, rather is two-fold: 1) The process of education is almost exclusively on developing left-brain skills, rather than an integration with right-brain ones that produce a mind-body awareness, characteristic of elite performers and (2) That process is facilitated and measured through a series of “standardized” methods and tests, not necessarily designed to meet the needs of the students as much as to fulfill bureaucratic, governmental and private industry objectives in the work force.  

Why is education like this?  And if it’s broken, what kinds of suggestions can be made to fix it?

Until next time, class dismissed…