.2 Threats That Make You Stupid

How can anybody live in the world of the millennium and not be fascinated about this? New understandings of how the brain functions is going to revolutionize the way we go about teaching and learning, if we really want to take it seriously. The problem is that lots more is being learned then we can deal with. The rights side of the brain is more active when the learner feels depressed, negative or stressed. The right side of the brain is also linked to unrealistic optimism.

This means that we can teach kids how to be optimistic. People can learn how to be optimistic. Why is that important? The reason it is important is the brain functions differently under stress, threat or helplessness, than it does when it is feeling cool. And your brain feels cool when you are optimistic. When the brain is feeling strong and robust, it functions much better than when it is under stress. When it is under stress it minimizes. I've talked before about how happy brains learn more than tired brain, fearful brain, or angry brains. This is just the same thing in more detail. When the brain is under threat it minimizes and goes into a knee jerk mode. It doesn't think much it just responds. It survives.

What are some of the threat conditions that minimize brain performance? Let's look at this list then weep. Potential physical harm from sources like classmates, staff, or family or other. Anytime you think there is potential physical harm your brain shuts down and goes into a minimal mode. If you have a kid in class that is constantly under threat from a bully, will he/she be learning? No, they won't. Are there lots of kids who feel physical threat in school, and home? Yes. Intellectual threats are the same: an idea of yours being attacked, or your potential being attack. If I say, "that's really a stupid answer," that moves the brain into a minimalist position. Anytime a teacher goes around saying to a kid, "you're stupid," you are putting the brain into a position of not being able to learn. A lack of information to meet the task requirements ("I don't know enough of how to do this.") is another threat that shuts you down.

Take, for example, when Americans go abroad and they get a bunch of strange money in their hand. A common response, when you want to buy a candy bar is to take a wad of money out of your pocket and hand it over and say "You pick what you need out of this." You just feel so helpless because you don't know how to transfer the information about your money to their money? You may even have the currency ratios, but you still can't think it through on the spot. The ability to translate the Euro dollar to the American dollar is easy because they are even now. But in India, 100 Rupees is worth 2 dollars. OK, that is simple enough: 100 rupees is worth 200 cents. But when it gets to be something that cost 30, 000 rupees, suddenly it gets to be tough to translate on the spot. (It is about 600 dollars.) Even if you know the number to translate, you sit there and feel helpless because you don't have the information to deal with the threat.

Then there are emotional threats. These are different from physical or intellectual. "I'm going to be embarrassed" is a good one. Or here is one that knocked my socks off when I heard it. Remember I told you that you control a class by creating privileges and then withdraw privileges? Well this new brain research says rewards can be as damaging as punishment. If you think you are under threat of not being able to get rewarded, ex: top person in class gets the prize, and you think "I can never be that top person" then that puts you under threat. The reward of the top person getting the prize can be a threat to you if you can't see how you can get it. Now I have to go back to the woodshed trying to figure out how to create rewards that are not threating.

Then there are socio-cultural threats, disrespect, isolation, and the inability to persuade personal values. If I have a certain sets of values and I am in an environment where those values aren't appreciated, I have a hard time functioning. The environment is expecting me to function in a way that is inconstant with my personal values. That's a hard thing for me to deal with, trying for me to function in a way that my environment doesn't allow.

Finally, resource restriction, is how deadlines are a threat in terms of resource restrictions. Example, the paper is due Friday, if you don't turn in the paper, you lose half credit. Now, we are guilty of providing deadlines in this class: if you don't get the quiz done by a certain date you can only get 18 instead of 21. Of course, our intention is to protect you from yourself, so you won't leave all your quizzes to the last day of the semester. But this brings up an interesting question: does this research imply that we should never have deadlines? Would anything ever get done? How would we reorganize education to minimize deadlines? Does it simply mean that deadline are ok as long as you are aware that students can't do their best work under those threats? That is how complex it is if you try to turn these principals into practice in terms of how you are going to teach.

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