Read Brain Rules: 12 Principles for Surviving and Thriving at Work, Home, and School Online
Authors: John Medina
Tags: #Self-Help
This model honors our evolutionary need to explore. It creates teachers who know about brain development. And it’s a place to do the real-world research so sorely needed to figure out how, exactly, the rules of the brain should be applied to our lives. The model could be imported to other academic subjects as well. A business school teaching how to run a small business might actually run one, for example, as a part of its academic life.
the sense of wonder
If you could step back in time to one of the first real Western-style universities, say, the University of Bologna, and visit its biology labs, you would laugh out loud. I would join you. By today’s standards, biological science in the 11
th
century was a joke, a strange mix of astrological influences, religious forces, dead animals, and rudely smelling chemical concoctions, some of which were toxic.
But if you went down the hall and peered inside Bologna’s standard lecture room, you wouldn’t feel as if you were in a museum. You would feel at home. There is a lectern for the teacher to hold forth, surrounded by chairs where students absorb whatever is being held forth. Minus perhaps an overhead or two, it looks remarkably similar to today’s classrooms. Could it be time for a change?
My sons most likely would say yes. They and my mother are probably the greatest teachers I ever had.
My 2-year-old son Noah and I were walking down the street on our way to preschool when he suddenly noticed a shiny pebble embedded in the concrete. Stopping midstride, the little guy considered it for a second, found it thoroughly delightful, and let out a laugh. He spied a small plant an inch farther, a weed valiantly struggling through a crack in the asphalt. He touched it gently, then laughed again. Noah noticed beyond it a platoon of ants marching in single file, which he bent down to examine closely. They were carrying a dead bug, and Noah clapped his hands in wonder. There were dust particles, a rusted screw, a shiny spot of oil. Fifteen minutes had passed, and we had gone only 20 feet. I tried to get him to move along, having the audacity to act like an adult with a schedule. He was having none of it. And I stopped, watching my little teacher, wondering how long it had been since I had taken 15 minutes to walk 20 feet.
The greatest Brain Rule of all is something I cannot prove or characterize, but I believe in it with all my heart. As my son was trying to tell me, it is the importance of curiosity.
For his sake and ours, I wish classrooms and businesses were designed with the brain in mind. If we started over, curiosity would be the most vital part of both demolition crew and reconstruction crew. As I hope to have related here, I am very much in favor of both.
I will never forget the moment this little professor taught his daddy about what it meant to be a student. I was thankful and a little embarrassed. After 47 years, I was finally learning how to walk down the street.
Summary
Rule #12
We are powerful and natural explorers.
• Babies are the model of how we learn—not by passive reaction to the environment but by active testing through observation, hypothesis, experiment, and conclusion.
• Specific parts of the brain allow this scientific approach.The right prefrontal cortex looks for errors in our hypothesis (“The saber-toothed tiger is not harmless”), and an adjoining region tells us to change behavior (“Run!”).
• We recognize and imitate behavior because of “mirror neurons” scattered across the brain.
• Some parts of our adult brains stay as malleable as a baby’s, so we can create neurons and learn new things throughout our lives.
references
Extensive, notated references are online at
www.brainrules.net/references
acknowledgements
IN A LIST of just about anything, items at the beginning and end are the easiest for the brain to retrieve. It’s called Serial Position Effect, and I mention it because I am about to list some of the many people who helped bring this project to fruition. There obviously will be a first person and a last person and lots of people in between. This is not because I see these folks in a hierarchy of values; it is simply because written languages are necessarily, cursedly linear. Please pay attention, dear reader, to the folks in the middle as well as to those at the end points. As I have often mentioned to graduate students, there is great value in the middle of most U-shaped curves.
First, I thank my publisher at Pear Press, Mark Pearson, the guiding hand of this project and easily the wisest, oldest young man with whom I have ever had the joy to work. It was a pleasure to work with editor Tracy Cutchlow, who with patience, laughter, and extraordinary thoughtfulness, taught me how to write.
Special thanks to Dan Storm and Eric Chudler for providing invaluable scientific comments and expertise.
I am grateful to friends on this journey with me: Lee Huntsman, for hours of patient listening and friendship for almost 20 years. Dennis Weibling, for believing in me and giving me such freedom to sow seeds. Paul Lange, whose curiosity and insights are still so vibrant after all these years (not bad for a “plumber”!). Bruce Hosford, for deep friendship, one of the most can-do people I have ever met.
Thanks to Paul Yager, and my friends in the department of bioengineering at the University of Washington School of Medicine, for giving me opportunity. I’m also grateful to my colleagues at Seattle Pacific University: Frank Kline, Rick Eigenbrod, and Bill Rowley, for a spirit of adventure and for tolerance. Don Nielsen, who knew without a doubt that education really was about brain development. Julia Calhoun, who reigns as the premier example of emotional greatness. Alden Jones, amazing as you are, without whom none of my professional life would work.
And my deepest thanks to my beloved wife Kari, who continually reminds me that love is the thing that makes you smile, even when you are tired. You, dear, are one in a million.
about the author
DR. JOHN J. MEDINA is a developmental molecular biologist focused on the genes involved in human brain development and the genetics of psychiatric disorders. He has spent most of his professional life as a private research consultant, working primarily in the biotechnology and pharmaceutical industries on research related to mental health. Medina holds joint affiliate faculty appointments at Seattle Pacific University, where he is the director of the Brain Center for Applied Learning Research, and at the University of Washington School of Medicine, in its Department of Bioengineering.
Medina was the founding director of the Talaris Research Institute, a Seattle-based research center originally focused on how infants encode and process information at the cognitive, cellular, and molecular levels.
In 2004, Medina was appointed to the rank of affiliate scholar at the National Academy of Engineering. He has been named Outstanding Faculty of the Year at the College of Engineering at the University of Washington; the Merrill Dow/ Continuing Medical Education National Teacher of the Year; and, twice, the Bioengineering Student Association Teacher of the Year. Medina has been a consultant to the Education Commission of the States and a regular speaker on the relationship between neurology and education.
Medina’s books include:
The Genetic Inferno; The Clock of Ages; Depression: How it Happens, How it Heals; What You Need to Know About Alzheimer’s; The Outer Limits of Life; Uncovering the Mystery of AIDS
; and
Of Serotonin, Dopamine and Antipsychotic Medications
.
Medina has a lifelong fascination in how the mind reacts to and organizes information. As a husband and as a father of two boys, he has an interest in how the brain sciences might influence the way we teach our children. In addition to his research, consulting, and teaching, Medina speaks often to public officials, business and medical professionals, school boards, and nonprofit leaders.