The Brain Revolution.

Spectacular developments in cognitive science, reminiscent of Dewey's progressive movement, open a world of new challenges for school leaders

An old adage suggests those who ignore history are doomed to repeat it. We're now confronting an explosion of new information about the workings of our brain that will profoundly affect educational policy and practice. Yet our profession, oriented as it is toward the social and behavioral sciences with only limited understanding of biology and cognitive science, stands unready at the moment to take advantage of this learning revolution.

Several key policy and administrative issues now are emerging from the cognitive science revolution. How might educational leaders begin to deal with these issues? Our search for direction can begin with an intriguing historical parallel.

Democracy and Education

In retrospect, it seems such an obvious idea. Why then did it take so long for someone to think of it, and so much longer for people to accept it and to incorporate it into our schools?

By the beginning of the 19th century, the U.S. Constitution had codified the basic principles that were to define and govern our representative democracy. But it took almost 100 years for a dominant voice to suggest that the schools demonstrate the emerging democratic principles that future voters must understand if they are to function as intelligent citizens in a democratic society. John Dewey's School and Society, published in 1899, and Democracy and Education, published in 1916, built on the previous work of others, such as the European educators Johann Pestalozzi and Frederich Froebel, but Dewey became this century's most powerful American voice in the educational revolution.

Rereading his books, it all seems logical. Why wouldn't a fledgling democratic society demand that its public schools be laboratories for democratic behavior--tuned to the needs and abilities of students? Why use the 12,000 hours that students spend in school from kindergarten to grade 12 to demonstrate the competing authoritarian societal perspective that our founders rejected in our war for independence? One would think that Dewey's ideas (or something similar to them) would have been enthusiastically embraced and instituted.

In one way they were. The Progressive Education Movement led to a wide range of enthusiastic implementation strategies (such as the Gary Plan, the Dalton Plan and the Winnetka Plan) that were widely hailed. I was born in 1927, and so I went to school during the period when these new approaches had an opportunity to become integral to the schools. Unfortunately, my schools, like most schools at the time, didn't function on democratic principles.

Far from it. We didn't even explore representative democratic values. These were not bad schools, but democracy was something we studied in civics class, where we learned to write down how our total government was organized. But we didn't learn how to democratically organize our small classroom community.

By mid-century, when I entered the education profession, progressive education was in serious decline, severely buffeted by its critics. In 1938, when he was 79, John Dewey published Experience and Education, a somewhat poignant title for a book in which he analyzed what went wrong with his dream to incorporate democracy into education.

The interesting thing is that now, at the end of the 20th century, many of Dewey's ideas quietly have been incorporated into American schools.

Cognition and Education

Our profession is in a transformational state. A cognitive science revolution, which has been under way for some rime (with a major escalation during this decade), threatens to shortly explode with a new perspective of what it means to be (and teach) a human brain.

Dramatic advances in brain imaging and other research technologies are moving scientists toward an unprecedented view of our brain at the cellular and systems levels. This has led to an immense interest in the development of a comprehensive brain theory that will be of the scientific magnitude of E=[MC.sup.2], in that it will spark a revolution in the brain sciences analogous to the revolution in the physical sciences sparked by Albert Einstein's relativity theories. It may profoundly alter our view of ourselves, as democracy altered our view of society.

The comprehensive brain theory will emerge out of Charles Darwin's discoveries about natural selection as a scientific explanation for biological diversity (about 150 years ago), Einstein's theoretic reconceptualization of energy/time/space/matter (about 100 years ago) and James Watson and Francis Crick's discoveries about DNA as the cellular mechanism for Darwinian developmental principles (about 50 years ago).

Predicting when such a major theory actually might emerge is difficult, but it probably won't occur before the turn of the century and, when it does, it will contain elements that will be culturally and professionally controversial. The global brain theory inevitably will lead to the emergence of a new John Dewey, a new Jean Piaget, a new B.F. Skinner--someone who will translate the biological theory into an educational theory. This is the theory that will transform current educational thought and practice.

Our profession may thus have a few years of lead time. During this period educators should begin to do two things:

* shift from our current social and behavioral science orientation to one that includes the biological sciences that are now beginning to answer the teaching/learning questions that long have mystified us, and

* focus our energy on trying to understand the development before we seek and promote practical educational applications.

Educational leaders ought to read several fine non-technical books to begin this study (see related story, page 16). In doing so, realize that this is a rapidly developing field, so one's reading should focus on materials published within the past five years.

Our growing understanding of the theory and research into the workings of the human brain inevitably will lead us to imaginative and useful classroom explorations since knowing why generally leads to knowing how to. To bypass the knowing why component virtually guarantees the best we can hope for is to stumble blindly onto a good idea, but then not to know why it is cognitively sound.

Educators therefore must explore how best to respond to the cognitive science revolution. It won't go away if we just ignore it. This exploration should include the study of the errors of previous failed movements that sought to transform education and the identification of educationally significant cognitive science developments that will play important roles in the educational theory that will emerge.

The task of school leaders is to make a prospective exploration of the cognitive science revolution, which may well spark the dominant educational movement of the 21st century. These exciting discoveries are occurring on our watch, and so we get to participate in the beginnings of all of the revolutionary fervor, decision making, failures and successes.

One never knows how a revolution will develop. Could Einstein have predicted the mid-century dropping of atomic bombs and the end-of-the-century video games? Atomic energy and the electronic revolution both emerged out of his theories. The Chinese word for stress has two characters: One means danger; the other means opportunity. Expect both in this revolution.

Starting Points 

Our profession tends to seek immediate practical applications of new theories and research findings, but useful applications generally don't emerge immediately from major scientific developments. The DNA code was discovered in 1953, yet most genetic engineering has occurred during this decade, and cloning did not emerge until mid-1997. Further, it's quite a leap from the tightly controlled variables of cognitive science laboratory research to messy classroom research, where the variables bounce off the walls.

What are the practical applications of an infant? It's a wet noisy pet, at least 20 years from a clear sense of how it will turn out. What we do with infants is observe them carefully and nurture them. We might try out things such as music lessons and ball hitting if we note interest and ability, but we don't make wild promises about accomplishments (except perhaps in end-of-year, holiday letters). As childhood merges into adolescence, real interests and abilities become clearer, and we then invest more heavily and decisively in practical applications.

This is also true with the brain sciences, which really are still in their infancy but are growing rapidly. It's a time to put our energy into getting acquainted with this infant that will change our professional lives--to observe, explore and nurture. Our discoveries about children don't generally surprise us because we've provided them with their genes and their jeans.

Similarly, many discoveries from the brain sciences don't surprise us either because we've been working with a room full of brains for a long time, and although we may not understand neural networks and neurochemicals, we do know a lot about how minds function. Call it folklore knowledge if you wish, but our professional instincts generally have served us well.

The Search for Resources

However, we also must get beyond our folklore knowledge. Our profession is grounded in the social and behavioral sciences, and most educators fulfilled the minimum natural science requirements in their teacher-preparation programs. Since the cognitive sciences now provide some answers to many of our questions, we must elevate our professional understanding of brain biology.

Pushing for change in teacher education program requirements is an important long-range solution but, in the short term, we need to start tapping into our (typically unused) best local resource, the top secondary school biology, chemistry and psychology teachers and the few committed "brain junkies" that every school district seems to have. They understand cellular and systems biology better than anyone else, and they are usually effective teachers.

It's a lot cheaper and better to identify and convene this group, to discover how best to use them in a vigorous staff development program, than to depend entirely on outside consultants. Investing a little in improving their knowledge will pay big dividends because you then will have local staff members constantly available to (1) assist teachers who want to teach units on our brain, (2) critique proposed programs that purport to be based on brain research and (3) set up and run understandable workshops on how our brain works.

Staff development will be more complex and continuing than in some other areas because brain research (like computer technology) is so dynamic. What's true this year may not be true next year. To wait to get involved until we know everything for sure makes about as much sense as waiting until the ultimate computer is developed before purchasing one.

Some argue that we've successfully used our brain for eons without knowing how it works, and most of us use cars and computers without really understanding them, so it's not important that educators understand the human brain. I disagree. Understanding the workings of our brain is important because an uninformed profession will be vulnerable to pseudoscientific fads, inappropriate generalizations and dubious programs that certainly will emerge (if they're not already knocking on your door). It's also difficult to imagine why a person who educates brains would not want to understand them and to explore ways of enhancing their effectiveness, now that such information is available.

Emerging Policy Issues

We need to start thinking now about several thorny issues that will emerge. No simple answers exist for any of them at this point, but it's better to contemplate them now than to first confront them during an unexpected community uproar fueled by divergent religious, political or cultural beliefs. Two examples illustrate the importance of prior planning.

First, the dramatic advances in the brain sciences are all predicated on evolutionary theory, and this will be disquieting to those who are deeply committed to a design view of life that precludes Darwinian developmental principles. These patrons already are upset that evolution is included in science courses, and they will be more riled to learn that Darwinian principles underlie almost everything we're now discovering about our brain (even though they may be fascinated by the discoveries).

People have a right to their various religious, philosophical and scientific beliefs in a democratic society, and one would hope that the discussions and debates that are sure to occur will be civil and productive--that is, a search for the ground that connects rather than the construction of walls that separate. Let's take the lead in sensitivity and civility in this and other areas of potential controversy.

Second, while cognitive research probably will support many current policies and practices, we can expect it to question others. For example, the visual, aural and movement arts have taken a terrible beating in this cost-conscious era, and yet evidence is amassing that they play a central role in the development and maintenance of a brain. So how will we deal with this problem if cheaper-is-better continues to rule when it's much cheaper to fund a spelling program than an arts program?

I expect that we'll have similar problems with such other issues as emotion and evaluation, rigid standards and rigid curricular sequences and the role of computers in instruction and drugs in behavior management. Expect more challenges as the implications of the cognitive revolution become clear.

A Nurturing Process

It's a good time, not a bad time. We re in this for the long haul. We shouldn't rush to claims that brain research supports something if we can't cite the research that proves it. It's not necessary to add the totem of brain research immediately to every successful educational practice.

If our evidence is shaky, it simply fuels criticism from our patrons. Let's rather take the time and expend the energy to do it right.

Observe. Imagine. Explore. Research. Implement. It's a good sequence for nurturing our biological infants--and also for nurturing our marvelously new professional infant.

Robert Sylwester, author of A Celebration of Neurons: An Educator's Guide to the Human Brain, is a professor of education at University of Oregon, Eugene, Ore.