Category: Social World

Abstract thinking and brain development

CT scan from the Visible Human Project.

Different parts of the brain mature at different rates. By early adolescence the parts of the brain responsible for social interaction are pretty well developed, but the parts responsible for critical thinking and impulse control (the frontal cortex) are not.

We visited the Le Bonheur Children’s Hospital today. And after a tour, a couple of people from the neurological division gave us a nice little presentation about the human brain. They used Rita Carter’s DVD, “The Human Brain“, which has a great animation of electrical signals pulsing from neuron to neuron through the neural network. I’m considering getting it for the class because the animations and the interactive slicing of the human brain are pretty neat. You can, however, find some, free applications for looking at the whole human body from the Visible Human Project.

Anyway, the fact that impulse control and critical thinking abilities are late to develop did not require fancy brain imaging to discover. Jean Paiget’s research on cognitive developmental stages found evidence that abstract thinking did not develop until the early teens. In fact, he found that abstract thinking (or formal operations as he called it) did not necessarily develop at all. As the frontal cortex matures, the ability to do abstract thinking also develops, but that does not necessarily mean that everyone learns how to do it. (At this point I make an unbiased pitch for the Montessori approach opposed to traditional schooling).

It’s very nice, or perhaps a better word is “elegant”, when very different types of research, using fundamentally different methods come to the same conclusions. In this case, neuroscience (brain imaging), which is ultimately based on physics and biology corroborates the psychological research into cognitive development, which is primarily based on observation and survey.

Silence in the Middle School: The Little Rock Nine

My students watched the video about the desegregation of Central High School in Little Rock and they were shocked. Truly shocked. They had already started reading the letters to and from President Eisenhower which are powerful in that they trace the story with the actual presidential records. Then one of the students brought up the video on a laptop and they all gathered around to watch. For 5 minutes afterward there was silence in the classroom.

The ugly, vicious hatred of the mob was powerful, and the one girl, Elizabeth Eckford, just a little older than the middleschoolers, just sitting there with the crowd all round, unable to speak, proud upright, but with a shell shocked look in her eyes. The video is moving, and it brings home the strength and courage of those nine kids in a world that must have seemed to be tipping toward destruction.

Desegregation of Central High School

Troops escort students to school (from Wikimedia Commons).

Recording of Eisenhower’s address to the nation on the situation in Little Rock.

In going over the timeline of human rights today, we realized that it did not have a card for the civil rights struggle of the 1950’s and 60’s. One of the key events that middle school students should be able to relate to is the desegregation of Central High School in Little Rock Arkansas. Imagine having to have troops escort you into school. Imagine having to endure racial taunts every day when you were only one of nine African American students in the entire school.

The Encyclopedia of Arkansas has a nice outline of the events of 1957 in the context of Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas. However, the National Park Service’s website is perhaps better targeted to Middle School age range. The video below is also a good primer, and my students found it to be very powerful.

The Eisenhower Presidential Library has some of the primary documents related to the events. They give a vivid account of the events from the perspective of what the president saw.

The Little Rock Nine (in New York, 1958)

The principles of macro-economics

With a national unemployment rate of 10%, most students are aware of the current recession. When they ask about what the government is doing about it, the answer is that they’re following the advice of a man who died over 60 years ago, John Maynard Keynes.

Keynes wrote the textbook on how to manage economies, particularly in response to recessions. If the economy is in a recession because people are not spending money, then his solution was for the government to spend the money instead. Friedrich Hayek, however, disagreed.

Hayek’s disagreement with Keynes is a disagreement about human nature. This is after all what economics is all about, how people behave. Hayek though that recessions are necessary for economies and societies adjust to changes. Economies go into recession because as things change, such as technology, some businesses will fail because their products are no longer necessary. Eventually new companies and industries will replace these, but as that transition occurs, there will be the general hardship of a recession.

So, if the government spends money to support the economy all it’s doing is preventing necessary change, which means that in the long run, the economy will be worse off than if the government just let the change occur. Necessary adjustments will have to occur sooner or later.

The thing which is most needed to secure healthy conditions is the most speedy and complete adaptation possible of the structure of production. – F. Hayek

Even today are ongoing arguments either way. The government, specifically the heads of the Federal Reserve and the department of the treasury, Ben Bernanke and Tim Gethner, is dealing with the current recession by following Keynes’ prescription. They are adding more money to the economy. Other economists disagree.

The video illustrates the differences between Hayek’s and Keynes’ view of the economy using a music video and a rap. It is a wonderful example of how serious issues (and you can see the sincerity of the creators) can be explained in a way that catches the attention. I like how the authors give the same message in two modes: the words explain the concepts and the video illustrate them (look out for Tim and Ben).

C.O.D.: Call of “Duty”

The Call of Duty video games are pretty popular among the boys in my class (the gender stereotypes hold up very well with this one). Last week they tried to convince me that there was enough educational value in the games to allow them to bring it in for their overnight at school. They even created a PowerPoint presentation to convince me. Unfortunately, for them, it was not particularly effective. While there was a lot of information about the missions and the types of weapons there was not so much in the way of facts or concepts they learned (Subsequently, however, one student mentioned that he learned about favellas in the game. Though I don’t want to think about what they were doing in the flavellas).

I would really have liked to have had them talk about “Duty”, as in the title, and moral responsibility. I dropped a lot of hints but too no avail. They were not successful in their petition, but we did have a good discussion about the purpose of warfare (if any), and how to make a convincing presentation (consider your audience). I may let them try again next time.

As a side note, The Onion, has a great video on the next version of the game which will be even more realistic (you spend most of the time in the game sitting around and then you get shot in the back unexpectedly and the game is over.) The video may not be appropriate for middle schoolers however, because there is a scene where the soldiers are sitting around bored and talking about what soldiers often talk about.

Gay marriage and civil rights

World homosexuality laws (from Wikimedia Commons).

Gay marriage is one of those current issues that allows for a fascinating perspective on civil and human rights. Although in many parts of the US racial discrimination and prejudice are still alive and pertinent, the issue has been decided; arguing for racial discrimination has no place in government policy and in the vast majority of society. The right of gay people to marry, however, still splits the country.

Terry Gross’ NPR interview with reporter Margaret Talbot is an excellent introduction to the topic based around the court case being argued in California right now. It starts with a discussion of fact that one of the lawyers arguing for marriage rights is a conservative, while the other is a liberal. This fact allows for a discussion that is much broader than a simple left-right political argument.

The interview also goes in to the role of the supreme court and its interpretation of the constitution in assuring civil rights for minorities. Loving vs. Virginia, the case striking down bans on interracial marriage, is a precedence that is key to the arguments of supporters of gay marriage.

Gross and Talbot also talk about the “orginialist” position that many conservatives take, where the Supreme Court must interpret the Constitution based on what the people who wrote it believed rather than allowing for the changes that have occurred over the past two centuries.

It’s a fascinating interview, that delves into a number of topics relating to government, courts and human rights, and uses intelligent, challenging, but not impossible language. Our next immersion trip deals with civil rights, and I plan on playing this podcast on the drive to our camping site. I suspect the students may not be too happy about this, but if it puts them to sleep, at least they’ll be well rested when we get to our destination.

Rock band and the choice of poetry

Popular music lyrics have been used to introduce students to poetry (Brenda Guerra has a nice lesson plan on the subject). We recently had an overnight at the school and the students elected to play Rock Band. It was clearly indicated that the songs they played would have to have language acceptable to the Middle School. Among the song choices they made was Bon Jovi’s “Living on a Prayer”.

I’d considered “Living on a Prayer” as one option for poetry reading but rejected it because I wasn’t sure that lines like, “she brings home her pay for love” would be quite appropriate. What I found most interesting was that even though they sung the song, they did not actually know the words. The game appears to only require them to make sounds of the right length and maybe pitch. So the singing sounded like, “Tommy used to blah blah blah blah.”

So now I think I’ll use the song, but I’m curious to see the response. Will the fact that it’s something they are aware of and play in a game make it more interesting to them? Or will it work the opposite way? We’ll find out.

This song also introduces issues of unions and the way the arts reflect society, both overtly and, in this case apparently, hidden in the music.

Haiti

The plight of Haiti is on the front pages with the latest disaster. Starting with the first and only, I believe, successful slave rebellion, the nation was founded with such promise. Sadly, however, most of Haiti’s history since then has been tragic. A series of disfunctional, corrupt governments were not helped by almost continuous intervention by the European and American powers. The result, the poorest nation in the Western hemisphere. David Rudder, a Caribbean song writer and singer, captures the sadness of this history and the current abdication of responsibility of its neighbors in the song Haiti.

According to Rudder:

… this was the first Republic in the New World. The first free Republic and led by a slave. You can’t get more intense than that and look where it’s at now. … it’s also saying to people in the Caribbean that we were brought here on the same ship, but the English speaking Caribbean does not know what is going on in the Spanish speaking Caribbean and vice versa or the French speaking Caribbean. We are looking outwards to different places and at the end of the day all we have is ourselves. The wider societies don’t really have time with us again.