I went to school through the 80s and 90s. Then I started teaching at the turn of the century (1998) and continued until 2024. I tell you this so that you will understand how many fads I have seen in education. As sure as the return of bell-bottom jeans as "flared-leg," some of those educations fades have faded and then returned under new names. Fashion has to have fads, or the fashion industry would die as we all just held onto our clothes until they wore out. Education doesn't have to be that way. The education curriculum and product industry needs it to be that way, but actual teaching doesn't. We can find out what works - there's tons of research available - and do those things.
Some of the things that prevent us from doing that are out of our control. We can't prevent administrative initiatives. But there is one that is in our control - our own wrong beliefs. Teachers often hold myths about the brain that prevent them from doing what works. I'm not judging them. Many of these myths were taught to us by trusted sources - some even in our teacher preparation classes or professional development sessions. Additionally, when you start looking into the history of these myths, you find that there was a certain logic at the time they were proposed. As G.K. Chesterton wrote, "All heresy is a truth taught out of proportion," most brain myths begin with a kernel of truth.
Myth 1 - The brain doesn't change much after the age of 10
The first person to tell me this was a middle school teacher. Even then, I thought, "If that's true, what are we doing here?" And if I, a curious child who loved school, thought that, the school resistant kids must have thought they had found the ultimate excuse. I mean, seriously, if this is true, it puts a lot of pressure on elementary teachers; and secondary and college professors can just go home - not to mention all of the adult learning centers. How did anyone come to believe this?
It comes down to the misinterpretation of a ground-breaking discovery and the over-interpretation of some common observations.
- Discovery of "sensitive periods" - Quite a few studies from the 1970s and 80s revealed that the human brain has windows of opportunity - dubbed sensitive periods. According to this article, sensitive periods "refer to the developmental time windows during which experiences have an especially strong impact on brain organization." Language, for example, is most easily acquired between 6 months and 3 years, which makes sense as that is when we are learning to speak. Lots of new vocabulary is attained, and the patterns of our language become ingrained.
- Observations of the differences between adults and kids - You know the expression "You can't teach an old dog new tricks." It comes from observing that adults are fairly ingrained in their habits and that there is a significant decrease in their rate of learning new things.
If you put these two things together and ignore the entire scientific method, you can see how people jumped to the conclusion that our brain development really slows down as we reach adolescence. I'm being a bit facetious; there's a little more nuance here. If you are interested, let me recommend the book, The Brain That Changes Itself."
So, where did we go wrong with these kernels of truth? How did these facts become a myth?
Well, first of all, sensitive periods are just that - sensitive. The definition I referred to earlier said that it is the time when experiences have "an especially strong impact." But, as education world is prone to do, we took it too far. That's only surprising if this is your first year teaching.
We decided these were the only times students could learn specific content. Spanish classes got moved from middle and high school into kindergarten. (May I point out that still puts it outside of the sensitive period - no, no time to worry about that while we redesign education over here). Math classes got moved earlier and earlier until we had 6th grade students taking Algebra. Their brains were absolutely not ready, but we read that the sensitive period for logic was 7-10, so we had to do what we had to do. It wasn't for a few more years that we realized the damage this had done because we had sophomores and juniors taking AP Calculus who didn't belong there, but we were out of math classes for them to take. I think it has gotten better since then, but given how long it takes to see the effects of a change on students, we need to think through changes a lot more carefully.
Okay, I hear you saying, maybe we were wrong about the school age parts, but you can't deny that adults drop off in their rate of learning new things. Surely, the brain of a 50 year old is less malleable than that of a child. Let me give a few examples that might change your mind.
- Me - I'm 50 years old, and I am learning about new things all of the time. At 47, I joined the Y and learned new skills in fitness. I got certified to teach cycle (and my friend is his early 60s got a personal trainer's certification, which is more or less a college anatomy course). I changed jobs and had to learn entirely new systems. Was it difficult? Yes. Did it take practice? Yes Was I exhausted at the end of the day? You Bet Guess what? That's true for kids too. Learning is difficult, uses a lot of energy, and takes practice at any age. Two years later, I can fly through processes in seconds that took me lots of time and effort when I started.
- My Granny's sister, Grace - Grace is the person I want to be when I grow up. After she retired, she found out that senior citizens were allowed to take free classes at the local university where she lived. She enrolled in a course on Ancient Greek so she could read New Testament manuscripts. You know how your minister might say, "This word means . . . in the original Greek." She could tell you if he was right. Grace drove the same VW Passat for 28 years. While it is a very reliable car, she did have to maintain it in order to drive it for that long. And when I say she had to maintain it, I mean that SHE did it. She took a class in rudimentary vehicle repair. After that she changed oil and performed basic maintenance. This was woman was in her 70s at the time - far outside our myth's window.
- My co-worker, Kathy, is 62. Every Monday night, I hear her practicing French because she has friends in France and wants to be able to communicate with them when she visits. She practice a lot because that's what it takes to learn a new language, at any age.
- My 74 year old teacher friend - He's been teaching 25 years - long enough to rest on his standard past procedures, but he doesn't do that. He keeps reading about current research and how to best implement it in his classroom.
Even if you considered those examples to be outliers, we would have to admit that one of the reasons adults drop in their rate of learning new things is time. As children, there are 6-8 hours of every day set aside specifically for the learning of new things - for free if that's what their parents want. That's just not the case with adults. We spend our days earning a living, driving children to soccer practice, doing laundry, and figuring out if the call we just got from the bank is a real or a scam. If adults want to learn something new, they have to find and possibly pay for an evening class as well as put off doing something else with that time. Their brains have not changed; their opportunities have.
So, teachers, what does knowing this mean for your classrooms? It means recognizing that, at any age, learning takes practice, effort, and time. You can't teach the students something today and expect them to remember it for their test two weeks from now. You have to give them multiple repeated opportunities, spaced out over time, to practice retrieving the information or using the skills you have taught. Otherwise, there will be no myelination of the neurons and know change to the synapses at the dendrites.
Go forth, and change your students' brains - no matter how old they are.
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