The Spanish education system has not yet realized that neuroscience is advancing by leaps and bounds and little is being done to try to adjust children's teachings to new knowledge of neuropsychology . But this happens because, surely, legislators barely know this new science and are not aware of the exciting discoveries that have been taking place in the last ten years.
In more than three decades in direct contact with the educational field, I have not known professors who had notions about how both cerebral hemispheres work in children, and how it was possible He can get the greatest and best potential for stimulation and combination of both . Nor am I aware that it is collected, by way of information or guidance in textbooks, it will be because the different laws have not contemplated it either, it is surely something unknown to many editorials and for many (or almost all?) educational legislators.
And, today, we know (from studies that began eminent neuropsychologists such as Luria, Benton, Bandura, and more recently A. Damásio, or neuroscientist Dan Siegel, and many others) that there is no need to bombard content to the children to learn.
The attachment bond is more important (a term that is used in psychology to describe the child's relationship with their caregivers-educators and that provides him with emotional security when he is accepted and protected unconditionally, and whose experiences go through the cerebral tonsil, center of emotions ), that the learning stimuli themselves, since a child is in expectation of the environment, constantly learning without the need to divide his knowledge in closed areas and rigid schedules.
Teachers and, in general, professionals working in education, should constantly keep in mind that the left hemisphere is that of logical reasoning, planning, mathematics, attention, long-term memory, language ...
The right cerebral hemisphere harbors imagination, intuition, understanding, artistic sense, creativity, genius, synthesis, music, ...
And the good thing is that both hemispheres are connected through the corpus callosum, but they are not usually stimulated at the same time . If we did this, the performance of children and all people would be much higher. But if adults do not know, ... how to instill it in children ?, How to organize the content of what we want to convey (left side) with what we feel and think? (right side) ... Because the order in which we think and say things makes the brain communicate and understand them differently. We all know that an old friend is not the same as an old friend, ... but there are many more important expressions that we hardly notice and that condition the message. And multiple situations in the classroom that can only be seen from one hemisphere, usually the left.
As adults we have lost much of our capacity to be amazed at the little things and wonders that surround us, (we use our left brains more, and we boast about it), it gives us the impression that children perceive the world the same, but it is not true, because they discover and be amazed every day with new images and nuances of things, nature, people and relationships (children use the right part of the brain more). And we continue killing the capacity for discovery and introspection by taking almost everything for granted and being conditioned by our frantic pace of adults, and we barely marvel at the change in nature as the seasons go by. But children live in that mental dimension of wonder (right brain), which is the richest source of learning.
And we can ask ourselves ... what can an educational system do in this case? Well, a lot, because children spend many hours in schools, a place where they will learn and we must not forget that they learn by discovery, with their wonderful fantasy, led by a discipline according to age.
And, through amazement, surprise, fascination (right brain), the child is in tune with the world and its surroundings and, if we allow him to be astonished, we have much of the motivation gained and, thus, it is much easier to internalize the learning and really be valid and meaningful in your life. And not only some memorial knowledge (left brain), often unconnected that, rarely, allow them to discover what the world around them is like. And, really, all this is not difficult. On the contrary, it is the natural way of learning and should be the natural way of teaching, because they are innate abilities in the human being.
Adults are the intermediaries between children and the world, they are amazed at every thing we teach them, that we tell them, that we help them discover.
With so much bombardment of new technologies (very useful and necessary, no doubt, but not the only source of knowledge), children are too in touch with the machines, being something that will accompany them for the rest of their lives and will master very easily, ... but it may not be so easy to develop critical thinking, socialization, conflict resolution, the arts, learning by discovery, ... if we are not able to instill it from a very young age. After 8 years, if we have not done this before, we will practically have lost the train.
So many educational innovations that happen to put more computers in the classrooms, may not be so innovative if the authentic aspects necessary in the development of the human being in his first years of life are left aside. Lawmakers should know this, also teachers to reflect and begin to give more weight to what is really important.
While we advance in the use of technology and do not do it in parallel in the knowledge of the human being, neuropsychology, the cerebral hemispheres and what they house, the capacity of the mind, relationships, emotions, ... and do not learn or Let us teach to decide at the same time with the head and the heart , creating a solid bond of attachment, we will not be guessing right, but by opening an increasingly large gap in the approach of an integral, holistic education that educates children to discover everything what they carry inside with the objective of self-realization, being happy and useful to the community in which they have lived.
So, to begin with, a little training in neuropsychology and education for educational advisors and legislators, editorials, branch politicians, teachers, parents, ... and the entire educational community is absolutely necessary.
Source : http://ined21.com/neuropsicologia-y-educacion/
Neuropsychology and Education
