Full text of pediatric neuropsychologist Steve Hughes’ talk: What School Could Be, Should Be, And Almost Never Is at TEDxPragueED conference.
TRANSCRIPT:
Steve Hughes – Pediatric neuropsychologist
Good evening!
Tonight I’m going to talk about how you build a brain. And I’m also going to talk about the role that education may or may not play in that.
But before I start, I’d like you to please take a moment. Turn to someone next to you and tell them please: what grades you got on your Maturità.
Okay, there has to be enough time, you’d have to have already finished it.
You know you can stop. Now I want you to stop. We’re losing control of the audience, okay.
Now the reason I asked you to do that is I wanted to remind you of how important that was at one point in your life. And of course, you did the work necessary to presumably get good grades on your Maturità. And then you went off to university.
And you realize that all that work that you had done to get those good marks on the Maturità had contributed nothing to your ability to do well at university.
Because doing well at university requires an entirely different set of skills than getting good marks on a test. And in fact, doing well at your career also has nothing to do with that.
And you may have found once you began your career that also had fairly little to do with what you’d studied at University.
In fact, the things that we do in school, in conventional school, typically contribute very little to what we need to do, what we need to know, or the capabilities that we need to be successful at life.
You don’t need good marks to do well in the world!
What you need is simple. What you need is, you need this! You need this. Yeah, that’s what you need. Well thank you!
Good night. Yeah, thank you for that! Okay no yeah!
This is what you need. You need to have a brain — a brain that works well.
And so you’re probably familiar with this kind of an image of the brain. Maybe you’ve seen an image like this one.
Have you ever seen an image like this? Yeah, these are the connections within the brain, right.
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Okay so let me show you another picture of the brain. What you’re looking at here is actually how the brain matures over from early childhood until adulthood! And the part that’s turning blue that’s brain that’s maturing, and it’s becoming functional.
And it is through the process of experiences in the environment, experiences in the real world, that the brain builds itself. In fact, you probably know because you’re a sophisticated audience that brain development is experience-dependent. You understand what I mean by that – experience dependent.
Not all experiences contribute to the development of the brain. To begin to talk about the kinds of experiences that do help build the brain, I have to show you one more brain picture.
Yeah, what is that? This is your brain’s version of your body. Okay how your brain is constructed, the architecture of your brain has a dramatic over-representation of the hands.
The reason that you have a brain is so that your body can interact, it can live in the world. In fact, the reason we evolved the brain was because well frankly anything that moves, that needs to eat, or can be eaten needs to figure out what it’s going to do. In order to survive, it needs to know, ‘Should I move over there to get that food source?’ ‘Should I go over there to avoid being eaten?’ or, ‘Should I do something else?’
In fact, the purpose of the brain is to control behavior. And the brain is controlling the behavior of that guy. That’s how it works.
And for the brain to build itself that guy needs to engage in a certain kind of activity. That guy needs to engage in a certain kind of activity – this kind of activity.
That guy needs to engage in:
Motivated,
Effortful,
Repeated,
Trial-and-error,
Experimental,
Interactions with the environment.
And that’s how the brain builds itself, and in fact it’s the only way the brain builds itself.
In fact, if you ever wanted to learn a musical instrument, you had to care enough about learning that musical instrument to stay motivated, to apply the effort, to engage in it, yeah, repeat it over and over, trial and error, experimental interactions with the environment.
Because when we do this kind of activity, it’s like barbells for the brain. The brain is a muscle kind of. And like building any muscle, you’ve got to exercise it and you’ve got to push it, as it builds muscle. And that’s how you build a brain.
TEDx audience is a sophisticated group of people. If you have children you’re thinking about the kinds of activities. You have an instinct for it. In fact, you’re thinking about the kinds of activities that you can have your child do, to help them engage in that kind of motivated effort, for repeated trial and error, experimental interaction with the environment.
And so you do things like say. ‘Yeah! It’s a good idea. Participate in the science fair!’ If you do that kind of thing in the Czech Republic. Or get involved in doing independent projects. You know you want them to find things that light them up. And maybe you’ll sample different kinds of experiences and you’ll say, ‘Yeah, you know my kid is into this kind of thing and we’re helping him or her experience that kind of stuff!’
So we like things like science fair. Motivation! Engagement! Working hard at loving problems, you know.
A lot of countries you have things like robot competitions. You have robot competitions in the Czech Republic? Yeah okay. So some people like to build robots. Some people like to write the software. And so it helps people find out how to do things, like work together, to work collaboratively toward a shared goal, to practice being good winners or being good losers.
You have to practice with those real-world applications of problem-solving.
Or maybe we sent our children to summer camp! Because we know that there’s a whole set of activities that they’re going to learn. They’re going to learn social skills by interacting with other children in a semi-structured social environment, right. I mean these are the things they need to learn. And they only learn them when they get to have these experiences. They only build these capabilities as a consequence of practicing them.
And even sport, you know. Some children are drawn to sports, some children are drawn to art. And as sophisticated thoughtful parents thinking developmentally you know that you want to line them up with these kinds of activities.
But here’s an example from a Montessori classroom. Here’s another example of ‘Motivated, effortful, trial-and-error, experimental interactions’ with an object of Montessori called the ‘Pink tower’. He’s learning to differentiate by size. This is a sensorial enrichment activity. He’s three and a half. He doesn’t really distinguish size as well.
But when he’s doing this kind of activity, he’s developing that skill, and he’s drawn to it, he’s driven to do it. And we don’t have time to watch the whole thing here. But if we did see in about two and a half minutes, he figures it out! And then we could watch him do it again and he does it in 30 seconds! Because he’s developed some cognitive capacity as a consequence of practicing this activity.
And that’s how you build a brain. And I believe that we want to build brains. And I’m pretty sure that we all want to build the brains of all children. And this is how it works.
Now a TEDx audience is probably relatively professional-type people for the most part, and we know something about research on families like yours. You are overwhelmingly preoccupied with the cognitive development of your children.
So you devote a lot of energy and time to facilitating this process. Energy and time, that people from different kinds of backgrounds and maybe even different understandings wouldn’t be able to. But this is how you build a brain. It’s the only way to build a brain. You have to give this guy opportunities to have this stuff to do that. That’s how you build a brain, and it’s the only way you build a brain.
And we’re wired for this. I mean it is nature’s design that children are drawn to engage in activities that help build their brains.
Right now, she’s learning something about how the natural environment is. And notice, she’s sitting very nicely. Well there was a time when she couldn’t do that. But her brain was drawn to nature’s design. She wanted to master that. Now she’s practicing the skill development of her, of her fingers. She’s refining her senses by experience.
And you know that’s how it is for all of us. That’s how it all was. This is how human beings grow. This is how we build our brains.
And if you ask anybody who understands something about brain development about the maturation of, you know, higher-order capabilities, even lower order capabilities, if you ask anybody who knows anything about the brain, what should school be for? They’ll say something like this.
Because it’s self-evident. Once you understand what’s necessary to build a brain. It becomes self-evident that this is how you should! This is not how you should! It’s the only way you can.
What should school be for?
It’s possible that school could be a place where every child from every background, regardless of the kinds of experiences they’re having outside of school, could have experiences in school – that helped facilitate this process. Give every developing brain its best shot. To do this.
But that’s not what school usually is for, is it? And school is usually for, as you know, learning things. And that’s okay! Because there are things to learn.
And you know I’m a neuropsychologist. Believe me, there’s a lot of things that I needed to learn to become a competent neuropsychologist. And it’s the same thing in your line of work – whatever you do there’s things to know.
So you know we have to learn material; there is content to know. But when we focus solely on content and forget capabilities, we don’t build the brain. And of course you know how content learning works!
And here’s another problem. Because this isn’t an environment that’s designed to provide children opportunities doing it… “Motivated…. repeated experiments” Like you can’t do that there. I mean you might have a teacher who has an inclination and tries to build some of it in. But that’s not an environment designed to build a brain.
But that’s what we do at school. And this is how we evaluate school. We give tests.
And if we want to improve school, there’s a very superficial logic that says, ‘Well, if we want schools to be better, what should we do?’ Well children shall learn more stuff right. Because that’s what schools for? To learn things.
And how will we know if school is improving? Well it’s simple. We’ll give them tests. And if they know more stuff as seen on the test, then schools are improving. That’s the way we think about school improvement.
And of course PISA has played a significant role in this. Every three years around the world, children take PISA tests and then the OECD produces the PISA ranking tables. So the part in purple – that’s the midpoint. There’s the United States. We’re not doing so great in Math. Instantly the mind goes to, ‘Oh man! Got to get those Math scores up!’ And ‘Oh yeah! we’re doing okay in reading. At least, we’re above the midpoint in Reading and Science!’ So maybe we’re doing okay.
And there’s a Czech Republic, and right away the competition is set up, isn’t it? Yeah. You’re kicking it. You’re kicking it in Math. But, ‘Hey man, we’re winning! Sorry, we’re winning on Reading and Science!’ So maybe you should get your Reading and Science game together. So we’re winning! So there!
And this spreads all over the world. Every country in the world that wants to improve education is trying to improve performance on tests. Because after all if school is going to get made better they’re going to know more stuff. And how will we know if they know more stuff? We’re going to see improvements on tests.
Now Pasi Sahlberg who is formerly with the Finnish Ministry of Education, former teacher, written widely about why Finnish education works so well, even though they don’t chase the test scores. He’s described this trend as the Global Education Reform Movement and that spells GERM. And if you’re quick and you know English well, you know what that means. That’s what GERM is!
But there are consequences to chasing the test scores. And believe me the test scores have real importance in the United States. So one of the consequences is you stop teaching other things or at least de-emphasize them. In fact, then you especially de-emphasize the kinds of activities that help build the brain, because those things aren’t on the test.
And everybody gets nervous. Teachers can lose their jobs; schools can close; principals can get fired – if they’re not improving the test scores. So one thing that happens is school becomes unbelievably boring.
Now in an unrelated study, the economic analysis was done. There’s never enough funding for education. In this study, they explored what were the consequences being on school performance if you changed from a five-day – to a four-day school week. You know the consequence was – scores went up.
Now roll that around in your mind for a moment. What they’ve done is they’ve created a situation where you do better if you get less of it. That’s what chasing test scores brings you to.
By the way PISA, other international tests? Analyses have been done! PISA scores predict nothing about the economic future of a country. Once you’re out of the bottom quartile, the bottom 25%, probably don’t want to be there – there’s basic literacy issues perhaps. But once you’re out of there, it doesn’t really matter how people do on PISA tests!
Other factors are far more important in predicting economic development. Google knows this. Google doesn’t care how you did on the test. Google used to be famous for doing brain teasers and things like that. They don’t do that anymore. You know, what predicts performance on the job at Google?
“Give me an example of a time when you solved an analytically difficult problem!”
That’s a highly predictive interview question. It has to do with this. How do you get a job at Google? You have a well-built brain. That’s how you get a job at Google.
Ernst & Young has done an analysis of incoming employees. They don’t care how you did at university. They want you to have gone to university. They don’t care how you did, they don’t care about the test scores. They don’t predict performance at Ernst & Young.
IBM did an international study – interviewed 1,700 CEOs from 68 countries in 18 industries. You know what they want? They want people who can innovate, people who are creative, people who can communicate, people who can collaborate within the company, and with customers. They don’t care about the test scores.
And you know what not a single one of those 1,700 CEOs said anything about school performance. Because it’s not a predictor. Everyone, everywhere wants this. This is a distraction. What this does is it drives our attention to other places.
Now Czech Republic has not always had national testing. But I know that you’re into that kind of thing now. It’s not going to improve things. It’s going to distract you as a country from the kinds of things that really will have an impact.
From 2013, this is an Education Analysis for the Czech Republic. One of the ways that Czech Republic in 2013 decided to improve school performance was to increase more assessment and evaluation in schools. Because after all schools are about learning stuff, isn’t it?
And how do we know if they’re learning more stuff? They’ll do better on the tests! And so how do we know at the beginning better? Well we have to give more tests. So that’s the fundamental dilemma of the modern age.
Is it going to be building better brains or is it going to be participating in GERM? That’s the dilemma of Education in the modern age.
