This is a continuation of earlier posts.
As chair of the Equity and Justice Committee for Lakeshore Teachers’ Association of the Manitoba Teachers’ Society (MTS), I also sent the articles and summary to the Ning of the MTS (a ning is “an online platform for people and organizations to create custom social networks”).
As I pointed out in a previous post, it is necessary for the radical left to use every opportunity to question the legitimacy of existing institutions.
The context of summaries related to the brain was that Neil MacNeil, the principal of Ashern Central School, where I worked, started talking about “brain research’ and how teachers needed to implement such research in their daily teaching practice. He even placed an article on brain research in our school mailboxes. As a consequence, I researched the issue and provided critical summaries that critiqued his reductionist view of human intelligence as “brain work.”
Hello everyone,
Attached is another article sent to the ESJ Ning (but not published–the file is greater than the 3 Mb allowed on the Ning). It is in a binder in the staff lounge.
I prefaced the article with the following:
The authors of the following article, “The Intelligent Method of Learning,” (Alireza Moula, Simin Mohseni, Bengt Starrin, Hans Âke Scherp, & Antony J. Puddephatt) argue that higher cognitive functions unique to human beings are, physiologically, located in the prefrontal cortex of the frontal lobes. The prefrontal cortex covers about 1/3 of the surface area of the cortex for human beings whereas it covers 1/10 for gorillas. The prefrontal cortex provides the biological basis for the emergence of reflection, choice and intelligence.
The authors argue that the function of the prefrontal cortex is to adapt capacities and environment to each other—to act intelligently, or to coordinate means and ends until they form a unity. Such a view of the intelligence is consistent with the pragmatic view of the nature of intelligence (as exemplified in John Dewey’s theories, for example) as the development of a structure with a determinant function that can be learned. Through the development of intelligence (the capacity to adapt ends and means to each other and capacities to environmental conditions), more increasingly complex ends can be realized. Goal-directed behaviour on an increasingly complex level is made possible through the capacity to organize behaviour over time in a flexible manner through memory and attention systems that enable humans to self-monitor immediate acts in relation to the past actions and possible future actions. The prefrontal cortex permits the emergence of such executive functions through conscious reasoning and awareness.
The authors then describe two different kinds of schools. One school is authoritarian and relies on predefined outcomes, planned units and regular tests. The other is driven by problem solving, social solutions to problems and critical reflection by the students; both affective and cognitive aspects are emphasized in such schools.
One problem with the authors’ attempt to link the prefrontal cortex with Dewey’s view of intelligence is that Dewey considered the use of the body (via the basic occupations linked to the common social needs of human beings for food, clothing and shelter) to be essential to the development of intelligence. Problem solving first and foremost emerges as a function of the human life process in the environment through the use of the body (and not just the brain as a surrogate for the body). Indeed, for Dewey, the brain’s function was to integrate the sensory and motor functions of the body and in no way functioned as separate from such integration.
Another problem is that conscious reasoning and awareness, for Dewey, is intermediary; learning involves conscious attention in the context of a problematic situation that requires resolution, but such learning eventually becomes habitual. Conscious attention gives way to habit so that individuals’ consciousness can be focused on other aspects of the environment that require focus to handle increasingly complex problems and the formulation of increasingly complex ends.
Nevertheless, the authors of the article do broach an issue that requires serious consideration by educators concerned with equity and social justice: how to enable children and adolescents to adapt their capacities to the environment and to adapt the environment to their capacities. In other words, educators need to question whether, in the modern school system, the relationship between the executive function of the brain and the adaptive functions of the body assumes a class form as a distinction between “academic” intelligence and “practical”—unintelligence, with class divisions being a consequence.
Fred
The Abolitionary 