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By Root 922 0

what is to be learned. You may have heard of or gone through a similar experience with a student or your child. Years ago, the child of a friend whom I was visiting arrived home from his day at school, all excited about something he had learned. He was in the first grade and his teacher had started the class on reading lessons. The child, Gary, announced that he had learned a new word. “That’s great, Gary,” his mother said. “What is it?” He thought a moment, then said, “I’ll write it down for you.” On a little chalkboard the child carefully printed, HOUSE. “That’s fine, Gary,” his mother said. “What does it say?” He looked at the word, then at his mother, and said matter-of-factly, “I don’t know.”

The child apparently had learned what the word looked like—he had learned the visual shape of the word perfectly. The teacher, however, was teaching another aspect of reading—what words mean, what words stand for or symbolize. As often happens, what the teacher had taught and what Gary had learned were strangely incongruent.

As it turned out, my friend’s son always learned visual material best and fastest, a mode of learning consistently preferred by a certain number of students. Unfortunately, the school world is mainly a verbal, symbolic world, and learners like Gary must adjust, that is, put aside their best way of learning and learn the way the school decrees. My friend’s child, fortunately, was able to make this change, but how many other students are lost along the way?

This forced shift in learning style must be somewhat comparable to a forced change in handedness. It was a common practice in former times to make individuals who were naturally left-handed change over to right-handedness. In the future, we may come to regard forcing children to change their natural learning modes with the same dismay that we now regard the idea of forcing a change in handedness. Soon we may be able to test children to determine their best learning styles and choose from a repertoire of teaching methods to ensure that children learn both visually and verbally.

Teachers have always known that children learn in different ways and, for a long time now, people who have the responsibility for educating youngsters have hoped that the advances in brain research would shed some light on how to teach all students equally well. Until about fifteen years ago, new discoveries about the brain seemed to be useful mainly to science. But these discoveries are now being applied to other fields and the recent research that I’ve outlined in this book promises to provide a firm basis for fundamental changes in techniques of education.

David Galin, among other researchers, has pointed out that teachers have three main tasks: first, to train both hemispheres—not only the verbal, symbolic, logical left hemisphere, which has always been trained in traditional education, but also the spatial, relational, holistic right hemisphere, which is largely neglected in today’s schools; second, to train students to use the cognitive style suited to the task at hand; and third, to train students to be able to bring both styles—both hemispheres—to bear on a problem in an integrated manner.

When teachers can pair the complementary modes or fit one mode to the appropriate task, teaching and learning will become a much more precise process. Ultimately, the goal will be to develop both halves of the brain. Both modes are necessary for full human functioning and both are necessary for creative work of all kinds, whether writing or painting, developing a new theory in physics, or dealing with environmental problems.

This is a difficult goal to present to teachers, coming as it does at a time when education is under attack from many quarters. But our society is changing rapidly, and the difficulties of foreseeing what kinds of skills future generations will require are increasing. Although we have so far depended on the rational, left half of the human brain to plan for our children’s future and to solve the problems they might encounter on the way to that future, the onslaught