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Adolescent Brain Research & Cyberschools.
By
Melony Clark |
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Cyberschool, a Wave of the Future?
Why it Will Never Work.
The widespread use of digital media in education may some day become the only method of educating K-12 students, to the exclusion of teachers, a method with which Stoll was highly critical. Stoll, a renowned and prolific writer, astronomer, commentator on MSNBC, computer systems administrator, and K-12 guest lecturer with a Ph.D, maintained that cyber-school, the “schoolroom of the future,” would focus on preparing students for standardized tests to the exclusion of student creativity and face-to-face social learning experiences.
Stoll’s logical fallacy maintains that because students would lack face-to-face peer and teacher interaction to prompt “unpopular topics and challenge accepted beliefs” (p.310), there would be “no learning” (p.311). And, indeed, there would not be -- not in the traditional sense of the word.
Indeed, posited objectively rather than as a logical fallacy, the creative and analytical thinking processes of students would be all together phased out in a synthetic learning environment where learning replaces listening. But listening to others is what prompts higher, abstract levels of thought and learning. Listening to others also instills the skill of debate while maintaining a tolerance toward the ideas of others. Further, listening and being prompted to respond in a socially acceptable manner instills the notions of diplomacy and empathy, thus altering the world view of learners from narrow-mindedness to open-mindedness.
Higher levels or abstract levels of thinking cannot be taught in a synthetic environment because the human mind necessitates prompting and scaffolding which is what a traditional classroom provides in preparation for the real world. For example, learning the eight parts of speech (verbs, nouns, pronouns, adverbs, etc.) is more profound than a mere standardized recital. The eight parts of speech were designed to apply in the “real world” where humans interact using the written and spoken word socially, at work, and with the family. Communication in the “real world” requires one’s ability to analyze problems and to make judgment calls in often complex situations and circumstances.
Thus, despite the fact that “interactive chat sessions will encourage a sense of community and enhance kid’s social skills,” this type of interaction may very well create a lack of emotional affect, a numbing of sorts toward the complex and intricate emotional landscape of humans. Time Magazine illustrated this concept in the 2004 article, “Secrets of the Teen Brain” which noted that the prefrontal cortex of the brain ruling judgment, impulse control, planning, setting priorities, organization, emotion, and weighing consequences of one’s actions is not fully developed until the age of 25. “The brain, more than any other organ, is where experience becomes flesh . . . . Not only is the brain of the adolescent far from mature, but both gray and white matter undergo extensive structural changes well past puberty . . . a second wave of proliferation and pruning . . . guided by a use it or lose it principle” (para.2, 4, 11, 12). Therefore, that which children learn is formatted and indelibly stamped into their brain engineering by the time they leave school and up to age 25.
Although “interactive chat session will encourage a sense of community and enhance kids’ social skills” (p.310), these synthetic chat sessions obscure human face to face interaction in real world settings. An online session does not measure boundaries, often people say things that they would not in face to face interaction. Further, children lack the ability to read emotions accurately. “In particular, they identify fearful expressions as angry, confused or sad. Fledgling physiology may explain why adolescents so frequently misread emotional signals, seeing anger and hostility where none exists. Teenage ranting (‘that teacher hates me!’), can be better understood in this light” (Wallis, 2004, para.26).
The traditional classroom is where limits, boundaries, and reasoning are prompted, taught, and monitored by adult supervision, interaction and reasoning. This essential element is devoid in the cyberspace classroom. Further, music classes would be phased out in cyber-school, but music and art are vital to the developing mind of children. Indeed, this is exemplified by the scientific evidence that “How you spend your time may be critical. Research shows, for instance, that practicing piano quickly thickens neurons in the brain regions that control the fingers. Studies of London cab drivers, who must memorize all the city's streets, show that they have an unusually large hippocampus, a structure involved in memory” (Wallis, 2004, para.12).
Moreover, “eliminating teachers and luxuries such as art lessons and field trips will save enough to recoup the cost of those fancy computers” (Stoll, 1999, p.310). However, students would then be denied the emotional marvel of viewing live a Monet painting in a museum, or observing the ecosystems and zoology found at a zoo, or viewing a galaxy through the lenses of an observatory. A different part of the mind is triggered by these “real world” experiences not found in cyberspace, and emotions are an intrinsic facet of the developing mind.
Indeed, “Not only do feelings reach a flash point more easily, but adolescents tend to seek out situations where they can allow their emotions and passions to run wild. Adolescents are actively looking for experiences to create intense feelings . . . there is some particular hormone-brain relationship contributing to the appetite for thrills, strong sensations and excitement. This thrill seeking may have evolved to promote exploration, an eagerness to leave the nest and seek one's own path and partner. But in a world where fast cars, illicit drugs, gangs and dangerous liaisons beckon, it also puts the teenager at risk” (Wallis, 2004, para.21).
Field trips and the arts are a way to divert from this high-risk beckoning by shifting the focus from destructive to constructive alternatives, thereby influencing and broadening the minds, horizons, priorities, and values in the impressionable, emotional minds of children and adolescents. This is not something that cyber-school could ever provide.
A map of the human mind, especially the developing brains and minds of children and adolescents, is far too difficult to measure despite standardized tools that measure lower level learning. Standardized tools do not and cannot measure emotion and abstract thinking nor can these tools monitor how a student’s intrinsic behavior is influenced and monitored in a traditional classroom environment.
More importantly, many children have emotional issues and mental health problems that the cyber-school classroom can neither measure nor assist. Only other humans can do this, including school teachers who do far more than feed standardized information via a banking method of instruction. Teachers connect emotionally and intellectually with their students. They have the capacity to recognize when something has gone terribly wrong in the life of a student. They have the authority to intervene on behalf of a child who is emotionally distraught or “acting out” inappropriately in the classroom environment. In other words, children will suffer from alienation and neglect in cyberspace classrooms.
As pointed out by Wallis (2004), “You can tell them to shape up or ship out, but making mistakes is part of how the brain optimally grows. It might be more useful to help them make up for what their brain still lacks by providing structure, organizing their time, guiding them through tough decisions (even when they resist) and applying those time-tested the. . .virtues of patience and love” (para. 30) an area in which cyberspace utterly fails.
Further cyberspace cannot accomplish what a human, a parent, a teacher, a school principal can do. "When presenting suggestions, anything [anyone] can do to emphasize more immediate payoffs will be more effective . . . To persuade a teen to quit drinking, for example, stress something immediate and tangible—the danger of getting kicked off the football team, say—rather than a future on skid row” (para.36). Thus, and despite, “Stoll’s logical fallacy, his contention is substantiated with scientific evidence.
REFERENCES
Wallis, Claudia. “What Makes Teens Tick?” 2004. Time in partnership with CNN. 25 February,
2008.
Author's Bio
Freelance writer for Kasamba. Also, my is blog at theproficientwriterblogspot.com
Masters Degree, language and communication; criminology, legal issues and post-traumatic-stress-disorder. B.A., journalism, minors English and criminology.
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