.6 Brain Maturation Rates

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Each brain is unique. There aren't two brains ever, anywhere that are absolutely alike. There are 30 interconnected brain centers and each of those brain centers has it's own map. Some years ago we didn't know the brain had 30 different centers, but now we know, but we don't really know what goes on in each one. All we are finding out is the more we learn, the more we know we don't know.

Then there are some weird things we are finding out, some at a gross level. Did you know that Einstein's brain was fished out of his head before they buried him? Because they thought it would be cool to study his brain. Of course when Einstein died they didn't have a lot of abilities to know what they were doing. One of the big statistics about Einstein brain is, it wasn't bigger than anybody else's brain. They fished the brain of a literary guy, named Balsac, they fished the brain out of his head. His brain was 40 percent lager then Einstein. We are guessing the size of the brain may not be all that important, or at least not at this stage of our development.

Then it turns out that the brain can mature at different rates than the body. Chronology there may be as much as three years difference in brain maturation rate then there is in physical rate. In a class of five year olds, some maybe thinking as 8 years old, and others as 2 year olds. I am not talking about special Ed, I'm talking about the average brain. Between two normal people, you may have a huge difference in the brain readiness to learn. Therefore holding all students of the same age to the same standards is unfair, some brains just aren't ready to deal with that.

Differing rates of maturity of the brain is a different thing than the ultimate power of the brain. Your brain may be slow to get there, but when it gets there it may be more powerful than a brain that gets there faster. If you take a slow maturing brain, and you keep knocking on the kid because he/she is "stupid" what you may be doing is ultimately limiting the power of the brain to funciton, when it could have functioned just fine or even better if we had understood this. We have many learners on many timetables.

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