Initial instruction includes:

But the movers and shakers of Edlanders will never--and CAN never---admit that we know enough and have effective materials to teach anything we want to Because the prestige, publications, tenure, identity, and self-esteem of Edlanders depends on "being involved in educational reform," in being "innovators," in always having more research to do.

Because if THE task now was merely to (1) ensure that all teachers know and properly use the well-tested methods and materials (programs) that can teach almost anything to almost anyone; and (2) make these tested and effective materials (programs) for teaching reading, math, science, history, etc., available to anyone--via the internet, CDs, and in books---then Edlanders would be out of biz. And they might have to take their proper place in the scheme of things--selling windup toys on the street, as suggested by Richard Mitchell.

The latest load to come down the Yellow Brickhead Road is "brain-based" learning.

Here are about a billion urls hyping it to the skies.

http://www.emtech.net/brain_based_learning.html

http://www.loloville.com/brain_based_learning.htm

http://activated.decs.act.gov.au/reading/curr_jour_hotlists_brainresearch.htm

Unbeknownst to the gullible of Edland, REAL brain scientists scoff at the way preliminary and narrow findings have been used by the brain-o-hacks to sell untested ideas and school reform packages.

http://teachers.net/gazette/APR01/strauss.html

Here’s what the serious brain boys have to say…

One day, its findings may have broad applications for education, and there is evidence that it can help students with specific learning disabilities today.

But it cannot yet tell most teachers what or when to teach or how to organize their curriculum, many experts say.

"There really is no research that links learning strategies or classroom methods to changes in brain structure," said John T. Bruer, president of the McDonnell Foundation in St. Louis and author of "The Myth of the First Three Years," which debunked the notion that all is lost if a child does not receive proper stimuli by age 3. "Educators are making a very big mistake by wasting their time on 'brain-based' curricula."

That hasn't stopped a growing number of educators from believing that the world of education can be reborn via neuroscience and by buying what Sam Wineburg, professor at the College of Education at the University of Washington in Seattle, calls "snake oil."

Companies sell learning kits "based on the latest brain research," and professional development consultants peddle the concept to teachers. Teachers set up "left hemisphere-right hemisphere" classrooms based on bad interpretation of research attributing learning style to the dominance of one side of the brain. Others decorate their rooms in pastels or use round flashcards because that is supposedly what brains prefer.

Here's another set of criticisms… http://www.illinoisloop.org/brain.html

But who said the hoopla about brain-based education is ABOUT science? It’s about the APPEARANCE of science. Just as was whole language, fuzzy math, and every other scam in edland.

The whole show is as vacuous and stupid as the "learning styles" fun house. But the brain-based pitch is wrapped in the aura of science. "The brain!" OOOoooo, the brain. "Neuroscience." AAhhhhhh, neuroscience. Let's buy some.

Here are a few examples of the pitch….

Phonus balognus from Arkansas, using simplistic one-liners about the brain to justify "word building activities."

http://www.ncacasi.org/jsi/2001v2i1/accelerated_change

Following shared reading, students return to their seats for a word building (spelling) lesson. While these lessons are whole group, children often need a clean, stable work area, so remaining on the floor is not particularly productive. Arkansas Model teachers use demonstrations on the overhead projector, chalkboard, or dry erase board to teach students how to manipulate letters, blends, and word parts to create new words. For example, in the training video Organizing for Literacy (Dorn, 1999), Carla Soffos leads children in a word building lesson where they build two words they are familiar with (“why” and “then”) using magnetic letters. The children then pull parts from each word to figure out the correct spelling of “when.” Activities such as this teach children to transfer their current knowledge to new applications. Another benefit of these activities can be found in the interconnectedness of all the experiences, resulting in multiple neuropaths being created and available for use to retrieve single items of information. Because the human brain categorizes information into databanks of similar facts but retrieves them by sorting through their differences (Sousa, 1995), the more neuropaths that are linked to a single fact the easier it may be to retrieve and use the information.

Wow! Staggering!

Here's a summary of the BIG IDEAS in brain-based education. I found the same list in at east 30 places. Apparently, the following list is the knowledge core of the brain-based learning crowd. Ask yourself, "Is this IT? Can you write something MORE inane?"

http://www.uwsp.edu/education/lwilson/newstuff/brain/overview%20on%20bb.htm

Core principles directing brain-based education are:

1. The brain is a parallel processor. It can perform several activities at once. [Gee, no kidding! You mean you can walk and breathe at the same time? NOT if you are an ed perfessor. Then you have to stop and breathe.]

2. Information is stored in multiple areas of the brain and is retrieved through multiple memory and neural pathways. [Like this hasn't been known since the 1800s.]

3. Learning engages the whole body. All learning is mind-body: movement, foods, attention cycles, and chemicals modulate learning. [How does learning "engage" a body?]

4. Humans’ search for meaning is innate. [Searching. Searching. Searching. Ah, I FOUND IT at last! MEANING!!]

5. The search for meaning comes through patterning. [What on earth?]

6. Emotions are critical to patterning, and drive our attention, meaning and memory.

7. Meaning is more important than just information. [Sometimes I just wanna know where toget a good cheeseburger. I couldn't care less what it MEANS.]

8. Learning involves focused attention and peripheral perception. [Really!!! All that time I thought I thought I could stare out the window and learn math anyway. Boy was I wrong.]

9. We have two types of memory: spatial and rote. [Only two? Sounds like we been ripped off. Which one does music fit into?]

10. We understand best when facts are embedded in natural spatial memory. [That's true. It's much easier to understand how to solve an equation if you are standing at the intersection of 12^th Street and Vine, in Kansas City, where they got crazy little women.]

11. The brain is social. It develops better in concert with other brains. [Yeah, it's called "teaching."]

12. Complex learning is enhanced by challenge and inhibited by stress. [Right, it's hard to learn algebra when you have a pant load of fire ants.]

13. Every brain in uniquely organized. [No??? Every fingerprint is different, but I figgered that brains would be identical.]

14. Learning is developmental. [Lie! We are born knowing everything. Just ask a newborn. All that gaagaagoogoo is a ruse—and not too clever. Like we haven’t seen THAT before.]

(Caine and Caine)

What then can educators do to enhance learning in classrooms?

Implications and suggestions for best teaching practices and optimal learning:

There are interactive teaching elements that emerge from these principles.

· Orchestrated immersion: Learning environments are created that immerse students in a learning experience. Primary teachers build a rainforest in the classroom complete with stuffed animals and cardboard and paper trees that reach to the ceiling. [Works great till a python devours Jimmy and Debbie.] Intermediate teachers take students to a school forest to explore and identify animal tracks in the snow and complete orienteering experiences with a compass. Junior high teachers take a field trip to an insurance company to have students shadow an employee all day. ["Now I'm sitting down. Now I'm typing. Now I'm rejecting the claim of Granny Frickert, who broke her hip. Tough! Who told her to walk?] High school teachers of astronomy have students experience weightlessness by scuba diving in the swimming pool. [Brain compatible field trips! How novel.]

· Relaxed alertness: An effort is made to eliminate fear while maintaining a highly challenging environment. [Huh? What about all those scary clowns we used to use? "Pay attention of Jacko the Clown willyou’re your whole family!"] Teachers play classical music when appropriate to set a relaxed tone in the classroom. Bright lights are dimmed. [NNoooo. I thought we still used arc lights to blind the kids.] Vanilla candles are used to calm students and peppermint scents are used to stimulate the senses. [I wanna know how kids are going to study with candles shoved up their noses. That's what I wanna know.] All students are accepted with their various learning styles, capabilities and disabilities. A relaxed accepting environment pervades the room. [How exatly doies an environment pervade a room? "Okay, Environment. You can come in now and pervade the room."] Children are stretched to maximize their potential. [What the…! "See Becky over there? Usta be 4 foot tall. But we stretched her real good. Now she's 4 foot 6. 'Course her arms are ripped out if their sockets.]

· Active processing: The learner consolidates and internalizes information by actively processing it. Information is connected to prior learning. The stage is set before a unit of study is begun by the teacher preparing the students to attach new information to prior knowledge so the new information has something to “latch onto.” (Jensen, Caine) [In other words, "Review good. Not review, bad.]

Twelve design principles based on brain-based research

1. Rich, stimulating environments using student created materials and products are evident on bulletin boards and display areas. [This is a new one on me.]

2. Places for group learning like tables and desks grouped together, to stimulate social skills and cooperative work groups. Have comfortable furniture and couches available for casual discussion areas. Carpeted and areas with large pillows who prefer not the work at a desk or table. [Tables? Couches? Yes, brains just LOVE couches.]

3. Link indoor and outdoor spaces so students can move about using their motor cortex for more brain oxygenation. [In other words, bust a big hole in the wall so kids can see outside. Also, give them oxygen masks.]

4. Safe places for students to be where threat is reduced, particularly in large urban settings. [Like panic rooms in class? I say Just arm the kids. Give each kid a 12 gauge pump shotgun.]

5. Variety of places that provide different lighting, and nooks and crannies. [This is the Thomas's English Muffin motif.] Many elementary children prefer the floor and under tables to work with a partner. [Oh, yeah. Under the table. Lots of work with a partner.]

6. Change displays in the classroom regularly to provide a stimulating situations for brain development. Have students create stage sets where they can act out scenes from their readings or demonstrate a science principle or act out a dialogue between historical figures. ["Today boys and girls, we will act out the Ides of March in Rome. Who wants to get stabbed to death? Billy?" "Today we are going to detonate a nuclear bomb. I want you all to take notes as your skin burns off."]

7. Have multiple resources available. Provide educational, physical and a variety of setting within the classroom so that learning activities can be integrated easily. Computers areas, wet areas, experimental science areas should be in close proximity to one another. Multiple functions of learning is our goal. [Wet areas? What, the bathroom? Right next to the computers? Now THAT's a good idea.]

8. Flexibility: This common principle of the past is relevant. The ‘teachable moment” must be recognized and capitalized upon. Dimensions of flexibility are evident in other principles. [Does this make ANY sense? Sounds like advanced dementia.]

9. Active and passive places: Students need quiet areas for reflection and retreat from others to use intrapersonal intelligences. ["Intrapersonal intelligences." Now where can I get me some of those? All my intelligences are intrapants. All I know is what's in my pants. It's not enough, to be sure, but I get by with a smile and a shoeshine.]

10. Personal space: Students need a home base, a desk, a locker area. All this allows learners to express their unique identity. [Yes, let's not forget the recently-discovered LOCKER cortex. What if a kid's identity is transsexual. Does the kid get to do a Vegas act? No? Okay, just askin.]

11. The community at large as an optimal learning environment: Teachers need to find ways to fully use city space and natural space to use as a primary learning setting. Technology, distance learning, community and business partnerships, all need to be explored by educational institutions. ["Boys and girls, today we are going to learn about ocean currents. I want you all to swim out real far so that rip tide drags you down. Some of you will of course drown. But take notes.]

12. Enrichment: The brain can grow new connections at any age. Challenging, complex experiences with appropriate feedback are best. Cognitive skills develop better with music and motor skills. (D’Arcangelo) [So, have kids learn to tap dance the routine for long division. Shuffle shuffle flap 36. Kick ball change into 1,256. Shuffle flap step goes three times…"]

********************************************************

Have you EVER read such drivel in your life?

Can’t you see teachers having truckloads of mulch dumped into their rooms; walls knocked out; bomb shelters being installed; tables with beds underneath; kids going into their lockers so they can activate their intrapersonal intelligences?

This is not just stupidity. These people are insane. Imagine a converation with one of these specimens. Ask them, "What the hell are you TALKING about?" They'll wet their pants. But that's good. Remember, the brain like stimulation.

And is it JUST coincidence that MOST of the "brain-compatible practices" are the USUAL progressive flop? I have an idea. All this brain bilge is just a way to legitimize the same old bunk. [But you already figgered that out.]

And let's end with this…

The only way to determine that a practice IS brain-compatible would be to employ the practice and see if kids learn anything—and learn better than when taught with an allegedly brain-INcompatible practice.

In other words…

Try X…See if Y happens.

The brain hucksters want us to add something to the model….

Try X…[Compatible with brain structure and operation?]…Y happens or doesn’t happen.

Since there is NO way at present to see what practice X does to the brains of kids getting X, or to know that whatever shows up on an MRI is the crucial thing to see, the only USEFUL info we have is, What happens when you do X.

Well, isn’t this the way experimental research on learning has been done for a million years? You don't NEED to consider the brain? It's a constant.

By definition, what WORKS IS brain-compatible. Or buttocks compatible depending on where one's intellect hangs out.