Why kids learn

Enormous attention is paid to how we humans learn.  Less to why we learn.  We learn best when we feel OK.  It's the emotional factor: when we feel safe, secure and respected by those around us, we have the right space in which to learn. This is a foundational truth for our species. 

Things are different in the world of lizards and snakes.   Theirs is a world where it's kill-or-be-killed.  Greed reigns in the lizard world.  But this should be different among humans—we were created to learn to look out for the good of others.

I'm a bit skeptical of Bush's "No Child Left Behind."  This program was mandatory, and well-funded at first, but while it is still mandatory, is no longer funded.

I'm similarly concerned about Obama's "Race to the Top."  Both these well-funded education reform programs diminish the extensive research into how emotional intelligence drives all learning.

Both were set up with prioritizing the "Three Rs" not alluding to the research demonstrating the emotional and cognitive learning is foundational for the "Three Rs,"and neither program paid much attention to emotional and social learning.

Both programs heavily depend on evaluation of instruction through cognitive tests.  This testing projects a vision of the ideal adult: one who can compete financially in the world today.  It's not far removed from lizard brain thinking.  It's even in the rhetoric: learning for survival.

 But education reform should prioritize learning beyond financial success.  Unfortunately the federal government's education department is crammed with people from the business sector.  Education models were shoved aside in the Obama administration's education department to make room for the profit model for education.  I have little hope for long-term results from this emphasis.

While teaching English in China in fall of 2002, I sat in an academic conference on English language instruction in a major Chinese city.  A paper was presented that discussed how students can best learn conversational English skills. They discovered that a sense of safety and security was critical: students learned best in a low stress, socially inclusive, accepting environment.

The same observation applies to Chinese education in all subjects.  For millennia, Chinese schooling ignored social and emotional intelligence in learning.  In my two years' teaching there I saw fear of failure routinely used as a prime motivator.  This approach worked passably well for learning to read or write another language.  It also worked to enforce government control of the population.  But not for learning conversational English skills.

Chinese education is now trying to reform:  away from nationalized, centralized curricula; away from frequent testing and teaching to the tests; away from evaluating teacher competency based on students' achievement test scores; away from a cultivated fear of failure.  Ironically, our education system seems to be adopting the patterns Chinese educators are leaving behind.   

Interestingly, all we would have to do is access the most important and influential document in our civilization here in America:  the Bible.  Loads of the content of Jesus' teaching and service to humanity is based on emotional and social intelligence learning.  Read the Gospels.  Find the stories.  Virtually every one of his parables is a social commentary, teaching humans how to treat each other with respect and honor.

Is the dumbing-down of American education the result of our national obsession with the myth of redemptive violence?  Get them before they get us.  Watch your backside.  Learn to survive at all costs.  Remember that TV and movie action dramas are designed to appeal to our lizard brains. It sells better…

I teach at Crow School.  I know the parents and faculty there. I am grateful for the many teachers and parents of Big Horn County who model and promote the kind of education motivation that really works.  We have a school district that continues to prioritize performance arts and athletics, where students build emotional intelligence through learning trust and cooperation skills.  We need to pay better attention to the research that demonstrates the importance of this learning.

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David Graber
Hardin, MT  59034

www.greenwoodfarmmt.org