10 issues about education

Every day researches write tons of articles and give lectures trying to explain education and their problems, there are even  social groups determined to point your fingers on the teaching work to excuse educational failure; but truth be told, while I write this article, and you read it, there are children in their classrooms that do not understand what they are supposed to understand and suffer with something kind of simple they  should learn with joy; teachers are worried about the next assessment period and there are people with university degrees without employment.

The unfortunate thing is this does not happen in a continent in particular, or in a particular country at a school in particular. Yes, what I mean is that we already know the problem of the education, the real work is how can we solve it?.

I am no one to resolve it, but  with the resources at my fingertips I´ll explaining the 10 biggest education problems. But if you expect a recipe to solve them, better don´t continue reading.

1) Confusion between education, teaching, and learning.

"Teachers are guilty of school failure" is read in some press releases, however, this accusation only shows ignorance.

There is a difference between education, teaching, and learning. Each has specific actors, rules and different functions.

· Education is provided by the State or by Education Center who decide plans and valid programs either for a country, a state, a city  or for a school. If refers to State education, schools can make modifications, and in the case of private institutions private curriculums are designed from what the responsible of a group who decide what must taught (Puelles Benitez, 1993) also should be mentioned that at the international level, education is a right that all people but especially children have (Aboites, 2012).

This is why education is outlined by experts in design and management curriculum designers and once a design is done, they begin to develop educational programs that will culminate in the best of cases, in the writing of books appropriate to meet these curriculum plans. I say in the best of cases for which many make is only makeup old ideas.

In the latest case of the model by competencies in Ibero-America, the model applies but the designers did not consider that this required a change in curriculum design, and made an incomprehensible mix of competencies by student’s goal and added the same long, disjointed, and erroneous content (Dzib Goodin, 2012a).

· Teaching is the implementation of these plans and programs, such work rests directly with teachers, of course, they played errors and horrors of plans and programs to use them to teach students. Teachers are the bridge between education and society, because their object of work is what society give  them  to carry out its work.

Academic agendas focuses on confined spaces of time are also riddled with administrative issues that teachers must attend.

The teaching part of social groups and is where society enters the scene, that if society creates child apathetic and not wanting to learn, teachers must work with them, because teachers are the recipients of what education and society offers them, is why that criticism of the media and sometimes parents seems to me so serious, because that statement is repeating the same mistake with medicine, because there is a complaint that people have the tendency to auto medication and prefer to go to alternative medicine, which produce a  problem and about  economy and health; but at the same time they claim that doctors kill people.

Education is in crisis, teachers can't teach, people claim, but sent children to school to educate them (Can someone explain me that?). This is similar to the parent who complains that his son or daughter says bad words, but when we listen to that father, we can see children only repeat what they hear at home. Teachers repeated the same errors that journalists, parents, and society have.

· Learning is the process that focuses on the student, especially in the brain of the student. It is a neurocognitive process and evolutionary that feeds not only of teaching provided by education. It is a necessity of the species. Mistakenly says that you learn in school, but in reality the brain learns in all environments in which is located, this includes television, social networking, art, and even errors.

So education problems are the curriculum designer’s mistakes. School failure is produced because curriculum designer’s misconceptions and many learning problems are not children problems, are actually teaching errors. Psychologists, who need so much to be in the picture, have sought desperately to radiograph two processes that cannot be seen in a photograph: on one hand the learning process, believing that they can see it, but what is not known today can be learned tomorrow and intelligence, which is fixed in a brain that changes and evolves all the time (Conrad, 2004; Dehaene, 2004; Fernando and Szathmary, 2010).

2) Memorizing is a key aspect to learning

This is an issue that has been controversial to educational and neurocognitive level. Education based most of the time analysis of learning in which the student recalls, however there is an error in this idea, because what the student remembers, not necessarily learned it, understood learning as use and handling of information, however, this has become widespread even in international testing (Packiam and  Alloway, 2012).

But the memory is a complicated subject  in neuroscience, firstly by which models are usually complicated to enshrine complex processes (Glöckner and Witteman, 2009; Dzib Goodin, 2011a; Dzib Goodin, 2011b) and because   memory is a delicate process that depends on the type of task and context (Brewer and Gimbel, 2011).

In the case of education, the biggest drawback is used into disconnected tasks, without context. In addition if student knows something nothing happens, and if he or she doesn't know either. Several studies about the error as a source of knowledge remain unknown for curricular theorists.

The first thing worth analyzing is the process called cognitive economy which indicates that everything that is not used; it’s technically deleted (Homel, Colzato, Fisher, Christoffels, 2011). The cognitive system uses memory intelligently, but resumes are loaded with information, without time to analyses, relate, and determine what is important. Besides teaching dictates as it has to learn, when you have dates focusing on academic tests. "You need to know this for tomorrow" and the day after tomorrow?, that isn't important, because they will give you a new content. Joke BuzzFeed wrote about the 49 things they learned at school and are completely useless. I think that if we focus a little, we would find much more.

Memory if specially based on more than one process, i.e., not only through the vision, but hearing and through Motors process, the students learn better if they read, hear a Conference, commented on the subject, wonder, draw and also write about it (Cameron, Brock, Murrah, Bell, Worzalla, Grissmer, Morrison, 2012). Learning occurs with all the senses, not just vision and hearing.

Store or no store, here is the dilemma. Memory provided that learning is meaningful for students, not for the needs of the curriculum designer.

 3) Attention

The attention process is socially misunderstood, people believe that putting  attention involves to have the look on something, however, the brain pay selective attention and through a complex cognitive process determining for the conservation of the species and that depends on the adaptation to the environment, produced by the interconnection of the neural networks that allow parallel processing sequential, or based on hierarchies that results from mental activity with a richness and infinite flexibility (Klein and Lawrence, 2012).

Selective attention is important, but at the same time the brain has adapted to be aware of the environment to respond where necessary (Dzib Goodin, 2011). So ask a student to concentrate on a single point of living with a boring stimulus is going against the evolution of species. This misunderstanding of attention has led many children to wrong diagnoses.

When people ask me how to make the students pay attention and not be distracted with the environment, the answer is very simple: say something interesting. Take into account the student and understand that curriculum designers are not aware of how the brain works, by what they do not know how difficult that is to keep the attention of an audience, so the work of the teacher is used innovative materials, change the tone of voice, allow participation and also find relevant information, play with the environment, do not allow the student to fall asleep and doing something else that indicates the contents of your class is not interesting.

4) Extensive curriculum

Curriculum designers probably suffered when they went to school, therefore designed plans loaded with information. The model of competence?, have of course no clue about how students can get their goals, because they focus competition in view that program has more content and forget the student (Dzib Goodin, 2012a).

The excess of information adds a problem which relates to those who run the plans and programs that are errors in textbooks at all educational levels, is not difficult to find errors conceptual, historical and even format, playback that is perpetuated, and when a student sees something on the Discovery Channel, it investigates in Wikipedia or listen at a Conference and asks the teacher about who is right. There is a personal conflict that is not always possible to respond.

One solution can be programs with less content, more critical thinking, metacognitive processes, (Evart, 2012) and more creativity in the resources that are used.

5) Teaching of science and technology

Most of us, socially agree that science is an important element for the progress of any country, so it’s important to include it  in education and course curriculum designers, have no problem in make it count, because developed countries have a good amount of Nobel prizes. The difference is that these countries have higher investment to make science and technology a sustainable business.

The United States is particular country, it´s number one in scientific publications, but is curious and representative: their Nobel prizes are imported. Schools suffer from the teaching of science, but have a difference; they have much investment for development areas.

On the other hand, Latin American countries, have very good scientists who are working in countries where needed, because they offer not only a job, but a decent style of life, examples can be in United States, Canada, India (Dzib Goodin, 2012b).

The teaching of science, should not fall into teachers, I think is a social error to say that they should know everything an expert knows, the teacher should know neuroscience, acoustics, mechanics of strings, orthopedics, epidemiology, organic chemistry, speech therapy, genetics, molecular biology and all the specialties you can imagine someone. To that is added cleaning faces, emotional intelligence, writing, drawing smiles, tells stories, trainer and leader...

The teaching of science should be in the hands of the scientists,  because isn't the same teaching science  and being a scientist, since the scientist knows that there is more than one way to do research and that the options to solve problems are multiplied depending on the number of variables and that nobody can know everything.

For their part, those who teach science believe that the only important thing is to follow what the book says, including errors, not out of the script, they pretend to know it all and are unable to innovate, for that has never done research without a budget.

The problem is that scientists feel untouchable beings. Although I remember in a few chapters of Cosmos Carl Sagan in a classroom explaining to children how to see the stars; why scientists should be those who teach science in schools?, because scientist have passion for what they do and that passion alone is transmitted when someone loves what he does.

Scientists may be on the basis of their examples teach critical thinking and thereby society could fail to assume many things as Burnett (2012) shows us an excellent argument of how society looks at science either the debate about who is and is not science (Hone, 2012).

In this case, the solution is not simple, socially there is to make a place to science, do scientists to speak with society using a comprehensible language, make that investors see an economic future and that science is not exclusive of universities where the chosen few fight over how many coins that has been an uproarious scientific crisis (Fanelli, 2009, Tucker, 2012).

6) The teacher is everything

From the point of view of education, the teacher is everything, from the point of view of learning, the environment is  the most relevant and cognitive flexibility key to adapt to the as specie.

From the point of view of education, the teacher is an instrument that applied programs, applied evaluations, which enable the strengthening of the system, is often confused with an educator and the cause of the educational crisis.

But the teacher is much more, is who teaches how to learn at the same time every day learning how to teach. Teachers Sculpt consciences, support thinkers, teacher is the instrument between education and society, that does not educate, not decides how it is taught, since it is tied by programs and the guidelines of the centre and which only has a limited margin of action between bureaucratic procedures, assessments and programs.

He is the person who is grateful for the academic success of children or who is spits you if the country fails to tie with the international ranges. But is the least guilty of what is called school failure.

7) Children problem

Psychologists speak of problems of the school, when a child does not learn is subject to a set of tests that evaluate what is not capable of doing and delivered a report saying: "before their observation that the child cannot read and write, we have demonstrated with psychological evidence that the child cannot read and write.” Jean Piaget last century began an epistemological revolution before the observation that most importantly was not the mistake of the children before the tasks but the logic with which the child came to this response. Also adds that what the children don't know today, can learn it tomorrow, hang him why a label that you cannot shake off?, those labels lead to conform with it is or to prove that it can be better.

The reality is that no matter what a child is, but what might be.

Educational interventions are always when you allow the child demonstrate if he or she  can perform a task and when the child understands what they should do the same, usually from different to the worked in the classroom strategies.

Effective strategies to teach children with academic difficulties there are as many as stars in the sky, all equally effective if applied properly, because there are two things that education forget: there are no two brains equal, not all learn at the same pace or in the same way as they have interests, needs and different talents.

Helen Vendler says it loud and clear: the great artists were not always students model (Allen, 2012). You cannot have molds where everyone will meet the expectations of some few, socially successful, creative, different people we like. It admires the great innovators, who close the academic door that drawn purple flowers when everyone else drew red butterflies.

Before judging the child, observe if there was enough red paint, maybe he child only have access to purple colors.

 8) Technology at the service of teaching and learning

Psychologists and designers of educational materials, water ink stating such or which educational material is best to learn, the list goes from conceptual maps, video games, Montessori, audio visual materials, but that the child learns of a radio or a Discovery Channel program is priceless.

 Jan Amos Comenius, was a Protestant Bishop who lived between 1592 and 1670 and is  remembered as the first person who put images in a textbook, because he thought that it was necessary children knew how was the world (2010 Downey). This is an example of a simple act, which is still looking for echo when we look for the best way to teach.

Learning is not restricted to a classroom, nor has exclusive contract with such or which method, expensive school, or material. Learning is an evolutionary necessity, how to teach is relevant only if you teach the correct rhythm. Teachers who fall in love to the students with only his voice, there are those who employ all sorts of strategies, there are those who play baseball in classrooms and there are those who organize debates in class.

New technologies allow the use of blogs, video conferences, video... but the search is similar to the Comenius. We are still looking for something to help children to see the world. It is important to use the right strategy for the right purpose.

What is the best strategy?, you have a long list: twitter, Facebook, Cut the rope, conceptual maps, movies and videos, songs, board games, computer games, songs, works of theatre, Discovery Channel, a chat with Pope or a historian... say something relevant and make it significant and undoubtedly someone will learn something, and if they don't learn now, use another strategy by that sure the child will learn tomorrow.

9) Creativity and innovation

Governments know that creativity with innovation and science are key to exit from educational and economic backwardness, but in this desire to reproduce the historical models of religious education, it seems that it has not learned what doesn't: "If you want to learn how to be creative, you must do what I tell you and as I am Indian you”. The same applies to science: things are so by that I say it; If Darwin or Freud said, there is no way that they are wrong. These are the many myths that kill creativity and destroy innovation. There are no recipes, sometimes there are moments of luck, I doubt that anyone can teach creativity and let another be creative with the current model of education. Many good artists sow seeds in schools, but triumph when they leave them.

What should guide is looking for talent, but an educational barrier, should be deleted for this "all learn in the same way.” This has been a good technique when working with 50 students, but among those 50, 10 are not going to understand what you are saying by that sit in the farthest room part and are distracted with the voices of peers, 10 more is not going to matter what you have to say, 25 understand half and the other half doubt it and 5 are motivated to learn. How to teach all?, simple: ask that the students of the course expect, adapted the program to your needs and look for creative ideas, including never properly valued ideas from students.

10) Art

Art has an impressive social role in society, but is never properly valued, but art has an impressive power, even though as a tool in education is usually forgotten.

However, sometimes the creativity and art can give response to social needs as shown in the French artist JR (You can see here a video) who uses his art to the good of society.

I cannot pass the impact of art, art must be in schools with plays, with music, with paint, must be a life experience, as well as science, sports, and reading (You can see here a video).

Learn the art and learn with art. Is why both science and art should be on the street, echoing a society that although it says need them, unknown them and sometimes even afraid of them.

11) The society as a beneficiary of education

I know that I said that they were only 10 errors but here is one more: internationally has the right to education, but students do not have the right to learn at their own pace, under their own needs and their own mistakes. Becomes the link between the good wishes of the education and the needs of the brains that are desperately trying to understand what the school environment gives them.

A couple of years ago I wrote an article entitled: educational evaluation and its forgotten the object of evaluation, is where explain the why assessments have no sense in learning, because they do not adapt to cognitive processes. Perhaps the student not answered correctly from the parameter of who designed the test, but not given the opportunity to learn from his mistake, which loses the value of evaluation.

The society has something magical idea that education can bring a better life. It is the argument that all us convinced to go every day to school, between 12 and 19 years, so at the end the dream is not managed. They can societies in different countries be wrong?, just look at the giants of technological innovation: all dropped out of school to pursue their dreams, and innovated.

When education takes into account who learns and the needs of specific regions and does not seek only a technique by which "so you learn better", "do it this way because that is the right thing", "I'm going to teach how to use your brain", "the Finnish model is the best". When education understands that there is no first students and students from second, because to date children talent programs were not 100% effective, there is a single school in the world capable of producing geniuses or talents, there are children that without government support get ahead with the help of a good teacher, perhaps the investment is not in computers, but on talent for teaching.

Let's be consistent, if teachers are to blame, let us give them groups, but they are not guilty of the atrocities of curriculum designers, educational administrators and those who write textbooks, riddled with historical, conceptual, and spelling errors.

Do not kill the dreams of children, each child happy with their learning, can probably become a successful adult, may not all be a Steve Jobs, but will at least feel good with what they do. Well the reflection worth.

It seems to me then that the role of education is to help children find their talent, the work of teachers is to provide tools to find that talent, society must shelter that talent and the child will take the complicated task of finding amid a sea of social needs, those skills that they are simple to create its own jurisdiction enabling it to exploit talents.

References:

Aboites, H. (2012) the right to education in Mexico: nineteenth-century liberalism to neoliberalism in the 21st century. Revista Mexicana de Investigación Educativa. 17 (53) 361-389.

Allen, a. (2012) Helen Vendler: great artists aren't always model students. Available at http://bigthink.com/book-think/helen-vendler-great-artists-arent-always-model-students

Brewer, JB. and Gimbel, Yes. (2011) Reaction time, strength, fMRI activity during memory retrieval and memory: Hippocampus and default network are differentially responsive during recollection of familiarity judgments. Cognitive Neuroscience. 2 (1) 19-26.

Burnett, D (2012) Arguing about pseudociencie: a useful analogy. Available in network: http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/brain-flapping/2012/nov/29/pseudoscience-science-argument?CMP=twt_fd

BuzzFeed (2012) 49 things you learned in school that are now completely useless. Available in network: http://www.buzzfeed.com/fellowfeed/49-things-you-learned-in-school-that-are-now-compl-77kb

Cameron, CE, Brock, LL., Murrah, WM., Bell, LH, Worzalla, SL, Grissmer, D., Morrison, FJ. (2012) Fine motor skills and executive function both contribute to kindergarten achievement. Child Development. 1229-1244 (4) 83.

CD Tube (2012) Flash Mob Flashmob - Ode an die Freude (Ode to Joy) Beethoven Symphony No.9 classical music.Available online: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kbJcQYVtZMo

Conrad, M. (2004) Evolutionary learning circuits. Journal of theoretical Biology . 46 (1) 167-188.

De Puelles Benitez, M. (1993) State and education in European societies. Revista Iberoamericana de Educación(1) Available online: http://www.rieoei.org/oeivirt/rie01a02.htm

Dehaene, S. (2004) Evolution of human cortical circuits for Reading and arithmetic: the neuronal recycling hypothesis. In S. Dehaene, j. r. Duhamel, M. Hauser, & g. Rizzolatti (eds.), From monkey brain to human brain (2004). Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press.

Downey, V. (2010) JA Comenius and the concept of universal education. The Encyclopedia of Education. Vol. 2, 1971. Available online: ttp://www.nd.edu/~rbarger/www7/comenius.html

Dzib Goodin, to (2011a) the relationship between memory and attention. Available online: http://talkingaboutneurocognitionandlearning.blogspot.com/2011/09/relationship-between-memory-and.html

Dzib Goodin, (2011b) memory and language. Available at: http://talkingaboutneurocognitionandlearning.blogspot.com/2011/09/memory-and-language.html

Dzib Goodin, a. (2011c) Attention  process: much more than just the look. Available online:  http://talkingaboutneurocognitionandlearning.blogspot.com/2011/09/attention-process-much-more-than-just.html

Dzib Goodin, a. (2012a) teaching by competence and its incompetence to understand learning. Available online: http://talkingaboutneurocognitionandlearning.blogspot.com/2012/05/teaching-competencies-incompetence.html

Dzib Goodin, a. (2012b) should teachers know neuroscience or science? Available online: http://talkingaboutneurocognitionandlearning.blogspot.com/2012/07/should-teachers-know-science-or.html

Evart, j. (2012) Early math teachers celebrate critical thinking, not correct answer. Available in network: http://www.ed.gov/blog/2012/11/early-math-teachers-celebrate-critical-thinking-not-correct-answers/

Fanelli, D. (2009) How many fabricate and falsify research scientist? A systematic review and meta-analysis of survey data. PLoS ONE 4(5):e5738.doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0005738

Fernando, C., Szathmary, e. (2010) and Natural selection in the brain. In B., Glatzeder, V. Goel, and a. Muller (Eds) Towards a theory of thinking: building blocks for a conceptual framework. Springer. Germany.

Glöckner, a. Witteman, C. (2009)  Beyond dual - processes model: A resurgence of processes underlying intuitive judgment and decision making. Thinking and reasoning. 16 (1) 1-25.

Hommel, B., Colzato LS., Fisher, R., and Christoffels, IK. (2011) Bilingualism and creativity: benefits in onvergente thinking some with losses in divergent thinking. Frontiers in Cognition. Available online: http://www.frontiersin.org/Cognition/10.3389/fpsyg.2011.00273/full

Hone, D. (2012) What is and isn't a scientific debate. Available online: http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/lost-worlds/2012/dec/04/dinosaurs-fossils?CMP=twt_fd

Klein, RM., and Lawrence, MA. (2012) On the modes and domanins of attention. In M. Posner (Ed) Cognitive neuroscience of attention. The Guilford Press. United States of America.

Packiam Alloway, T. (2012) Teachers' perceptions of classroom behaviour and working memory. Educational Research and Review. 138-142 (6) 7.

TED Talk (2011) JR completo TED prize wish: Use art to turn the word inside out. Available online: http://www.ted.com/talks/jr_s_ted_prize_wish_use_art_to_turn_the_world_inside_out.html

Tucker, I. (2012) Science writing: how do you make complex issues accessible and readable? Available in http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2012/dec/02/science-writing-debate-pinker-gleick-greene-frank-foer?CMP=twt_fd

What are the letters?

This note was written specially for a radio show in Mexico City hosted by my very good friend Antonio Rodriguez. He reads tales for children and have so much fun teaching interesting things to adults.

So, this little idea doesn't have any other message than help to children to enjoy letters.

What are the letters? 

The letters are the signs which we see the sounds. The language is the expression of the words we say, for example mom, dad or carrot, but they are sounds, we cannot see them, and they just go through our ears.

One day, humans decided  they wanted  to see those sounds because the words are kind of butterflies that fly free by a flowery garden, flying freely and in a moment, disappear!, so someone suggested the idea of hunting them to save them, of course without mistreat them, so it’s possible to  share them with others!.

So each letter represents a sound, there is no a letter with two sounds, each one has a name so we can’t confuse them, if you look carefully, you will see that each one has a specific shape, some of them have long hair, others have balls to play when you give them the opportunity, while others, have smiles of colors, they are fun because they like so much share ideas.

What is reading?

Reading is the way we produce the sound of the letters. Equal when a pianist or violinist extracted music from a sheet music, letters, when you read tell you their secrets, through the sound that someone wrote one day. It’s similar  to get sound from the ideas, but we need to be careful and respect the cadence and rhythm of those ideas, because if we read very fast and without noticing, we can read in wrong way, so we  must learn to feel every letter, every word, every idea, because nobody likes a song singed in a wrong way, right?

When we read, someone share images, smells, through words and allows us to sit down near to tell us what that person lived, dreamed or ate. When we read, it's like talking to someone who only asks us to pay  attention.

And when we write, how do letters work?

Reading and writing go hand by hand, when we write, we draw our ideas, and we photograph them to those who want to see them and enjoy them. The word is like a sweet caress that gently kisses the wings of a nightingale, but when we write them angry, they hurt, they can be deadly. People can be very sad reading ideas that people write when they are angry. That is why we must be careful with words. When we write, we sculpt on paper our ideas, goals, fears, our good and bad days, and make them ever lasting. It's like taking pictures of our lives.

The letters when they are separate do not say a lot, for example if you put an A, just say A... but if we put question symbol sounds A? And if we write an exclamation sounds A!... but when we invite to the party with other letters for example the “m", together sound like "ma" and if we repeat that sound cute because they are able to say "mama".

That´s why letters do not like to be alone, they like to have many friends, and sometimes also invite punctuation marks, because when they have more friends  together, more things are able to say!.

Why some children have problems to read?

Some children do not recognize the differences between each letters, confuse them, in part because we they teach them very fast, they see the letters as if they were in a car at high speed and try to count all the  pink flowers that see around, it's very difficult!. But sometimes if you take the time and walk, it’s very easy to see all the pink flowers with great care. Some letters are like the A look like an airplane, ready to fly!. Others, like for example the "u" is like a rope that invites you to jump.

My favorite letter is G, because it seems a threaded kitten. When each child learns to recognize that each letter has a name and a personality, as peers in a classroom, it is easier to begin to read and write, and the letters become friends.

What do we learn when we read? Everybody get mad at me because I read wrong!

The important thing when we reading, is enjoy being with our friends the letters, it should be like a birthday party, pure fun!, sometimes adults don't know how to smile, but it's not their  fault, it’s because they forget to eat breakfast!. That is why when children read, should do it at your own pace, enjoying each letter, respecting every space, every silence,  that way, when others hear you reading,  would hear their favorite song.

When you become a friend of the letters, they come to you, they seek you, and you can never run away from them!, they become your best partners.

But, what if they don’t like my face?

Letters are always ready to make new friends!, they don't care if you're blond,brunette, if you have bugers  or if your clothes are dirty. Letters, like people but especially children, love to share stories,!, and you can’t  tell me that you don’t like stories when you go camping, during a long trip, or the love poems!. Like the story of the child who felt brave one day, and jumped into a mountain of letters to rescue the letter "q"?, all those stories are in the letters and they are waiting anxiously for a child to read them.

But if you like to read them, why should I write them?

Because, when we write, we have the amazing opportunity of knowing other people, sharing ideas. For example, if you write down what you eat for breakfast today, you're sharing it with someone else than you and your mom. When we write we are open a door to meet other persons. For example, would you know something about me if I would have written this story about letters?.

Writing as cognitive tool

It is amazing how much has changed the technology applied to writing in 150 years, from writing with a goose feather dipped in ink which allowed ideas flowing on paper to typing ideas on a screen.

Technology of writing has not changed too much if we think about it, feathers were used so many years, and then during century XIX fountain pen began to be develop by several inventors who made few changes to the original designs and the ball point pen was issued at 1888.

During century XX most of us learned to use a pencil or a pen and when we had enough things to write down, we changed and began to try with a keyboard, pressing keys, wasting paper when we had a mistake at any part of the page, but not many years later, computers came with screens added to keyboards and now, here we are touching letters on a screen. It seems writing is easier, and there is no doubt taping on a screen and hand writing need different skills.

Typing on a screen made life fun to some persons, for example, it is very obvious when a left-handed child write by hand, because their body needs a particular position, if they can’t find it their writing is a disaster. On the keyboards or touch screens, position does not matter; they are designed to use both hands. 

In case we need to appreciate even more the computer tablets or smart phones, they are fun and attractive to children, it seems they have a kind of magnetic glue specially designed for children hand, maybe that’s the reason parents buy them to give more exposure than never before. In a study conducted in The United States, parents said that having kids give them extra justification to buy devices.

The article entitled the writing on screen shares a historical tour around the development of writing, and remains the value of handwriting as a personal characteristic, because things can be said based on the way we draw every idea, through our personal inspiration using words.

At this particular point, it’s important to highlight, while handwriting requires specific movement to outline each of the letters, which means the motor and visual recognition of every letter, this is not need in so sophisticated way with keyboards, but no matter, we must differentiated every letters and the space to write. Of course, typing only makes recognition of keys but it’s not necessary to pay attention to space into the sheet because applications do it automatically, and some persons actually don’t need to see the keyboard, even we know this can produce the common finger’s error.

 

However writing it’s much more, it’s a process that can be highly specialized, with basic needs like having an idea to share, conceptual thinking, the transfer of knowledge, judgment, critical analysis, sometimes induction, deduction, attention to details, troubleshooting and empathy to mention just a few needs.

We can’t deny devices make our writing easier since there are application to correct spelling (when the word is in the dictionary) and sometimes helps with the syntax, and this add to writing a complete new perspective; furthermore keyboards allow a speed of writing hardly reachable by the hand writing, (except in the case of doctors, whose writing is incomprehensible), and also allow the use either hands, or just a finger, unlike the handwriting.

But no matter if we write with a keyboard, a pen, or a pencil, the most important skill will be to have a clear idea about what to share, because writing is much more than just unites letters. I know most of us started our writing copying letters on a sheet, writing is a deeper cultural tool which needs to develop ideas and write them correctly having on mind a reader. Writing is trying to take attention of a person for a moment and at the end of our ideas leave something to think about.

Writing can be a knife on our neck or an award, persons judge us by the details of our writing; strictly speaking, the modeling of the letters on a surface could be a reflex of the character of a person and talking about learning, depending on how the brain processes the information, words can be a door to our inner world.

Now more than never before, authors require being very careful how they share their knowledge, especially with publication is online, since words can have different meanings at other contexts or cultures, and this determines the impact of a simple phrase.

I can’t avoid saying that technology has changed the way we say things. When we were students, our favorite teacher was who allowed us to write just few pages, and it was even better if he or she added the phrase: what matters are the ideas and not the number of words.

Now we hate Twitter by the restriction that involves, how is it possible to explain to someone the theory of multiple colors in black and white if you only have 140 characters?. 

Facebook?, how can we write a simple idea when there are 3 thousand people saying things at the same time? What I said is pushed to the bottom or pushed high if by any reason my comment opens a door to more than one meaning and begins a debate.

How can our words touch to readers? Or even more: how can we develop a joy for writing and share ideas on others?. I have two ideas around this topic:

            1)    Writing is a cultural tool, beyond the device we use, it’s much more than unite words   

                          2) As a tool, it must become a need, not an obligation.

Writing must be a used as communication tool, from simple task to complex, like a to do list, a text message to ask simple things, a letter to Santa Claus, a short story. Have you tried to say a story with 5 words?; children must learn to write, unless you want to read the complaints of teachers, and no desire to upset anyone, I think children never do it by themselves if we don’t invite them to do it, if writing is not seen as a cultural need, it will see as a school torture.

Let’s stop saying people don’t know to write, let’s find strategies to make them write, and every step counts, from text messages, twitter, facebook, that’s the beginning for a book, let’s stop saying: you don’t know, let’s say: that’s a cool phrase!.

Handwriting and the writing with the keyboard are complementary, following the rule more is better, so it does not reason to drop skills, but combine them. Children feel more attracted to screen than a pencil, that’s why every day there are new apps trying to emulate handwriting on the screen, and, we never know, some can feel pencil is interesting, at the end the device is just a tool.

Instead of saying that someone has bad spelling or that his or her writing is incomprehensible, and that person is not enough intelligent, we should spend a minute and appreciate even one logic sentence, make it fun, open other channels, for example for some few persons like how the ink smells,  some pens are more fun than others. Personally my hands have typed so much than using a pen is painful, but the most important is find a way to open of opportunities and discover a nice reason to share ideas, without forgetting, however, that there are more than one eloquent means of expression, whatever the way you decide, handwriting, typing or taping, are just a mean the goal is not drawing letter, but telling ideas.

I want to thank to the wonderful spanish artist  Antonio Alonso Lopera because his drawings are illustrating this post. He gave us a good example of creativity because he draws with a Pen Bic, sometimes words come in images. You can enjoy his art at his facebook page Antonio A L Arte or enjoy his blog: http://arteaal.blogspot.com/

Alma Dzib Goodin

If you want to know more about my writing, please visit: http://www.almadzib.com

References:

Barragan, MA. (2012) Thinking in the internet age. Aeromexico Clase Premier. 3 (35) 78-80.

Bells, M. (W/D) A brief history of writing instruments. Available at: http://inventors.about.com/library/weekly/aa100197.htm

Casanova  Cardiel, H. (2012) México, con mayor número de analfabetas que hace poco más de 10 años. Boletin UNAM-DGCS-550. Available at: http://www.dgcs.unam.mx/boletin/bdboletin/2012_550.html

Dzib Goodin, A. (2011) Reading, and writing: more than just unite letters. Available at: http://talkingaboutneurocognitionandlearning.blogspot.com/2011/11/reading-and-writing-more-than-just.html

Dzib Goodin, A. (2011) The difficulties with the process of reading and writing. Available at: http://talkingaboutneurocognitionandlearning.blogspot.com/2011/12/difficulties-with-process-of-reading.html

Historic Connection (W/D) The history and development of writing. Available at: http://historicconnections.webs.com/historyofwriting.htm

Martina, E. (2012) The writing on the screen. Available at: http://ivichiesays.WordPress.com/2012/02/11/the-writing-on-the-screen/

Moses, L. (2012) Data points: wired child preescolers have more exposure to electronics than ever. Available at: http://www.adweek.com/news/technology/data-points-wired-child-143732

 NHS Choices. (2011) Does typing make learning harder? Available at: http://www.nhs.uk/News/2011/01January/pages/writing-versus-typing-for-learning.aspx

Learning and evolution

When the idea of studying learning began to grow in my head I was sure it would be an easy task, the library had at least 100 aisles dedicated to different strategies, models, explanations, theories about how it should be taught. Education, teaching, or learning problems were kind of synonyms of learning.

After reading all the books, magazines were a good source of inspiration, but only created more notes into pages of my notebooks which ended quickly and I finally decided to look in the brain, it was the logical step, because it’s where learning is scanned, processed and stored. 

I believed it was going to be easy to find answers in this lump that all of us  carry all on our shoulders, and it seemed an easy journey, after all,  how much can fit in an average area of 1130 cm³?.

My trip was from structures with their latin names to the connectome, which is a map of the neural connections, and seeks to describe the brain structure, as well as the genome is more than just a juxtaposition of genes, the set of neural connections is much more than the sum of its individual components (Biswal, Mennes, Zuo, Gohel, Kelly Smith; Beckmann, Adelstein, Buckner, Colcombe et al., 2010).

Connections 

A great expert in this topic, Sebastian Seung (2012) explains  that the connectome contains millions of times more connections than the letters of the genome, and each one will be building specific connections, all those networks is the personal  connectome, which is created on 4 principles: reweightingthis means changes in the strength of the synapses; reconnection is the creation and elimination of synapses; rewiring that is the creation and elimination of neuronal branches and regeneration which is creation and elimination of neurons.

If neurons were all, it seemed logic that understanding learning should not take me more than 10 years, but as Dehaene (2011) figured out,  brain represents the reply of the slow evolution of species governed by the principle of the same natural selection that has been perfected over the years allowing the brain to optimize the way in which processes the huge flow of sensory information received to adapt the reactions of the body to a competitive and hostile environment.

If the key of learning is exclusively in the brain, then the idea of learning adapting to the environment was valid and I mistakenly arrived to propose that learning allowed this adaptation, I cannot deny the error because I published in different articles. I changed my mind when a biologist made me remember that other species adapt, including proteins as I explained in another entry on this blog (Dzib Goodin, 2012). Prions took away my sleep for a while.

So it was time to seek the evolutionary mechanisms. Finally we are the sum of the processes of changes and adaptations.

Years of change

Someone kindly suggested me to explore theBaldwin effect, also known as ontogenetic evolution which is a theory of the likely evolution process of learning, which was published for the first time in 1896. The theory proposes a mechanism for learning ability in general, based on the idea of selected descendants of a group can have greater capacity to learn new skills rather than simply the abilities granted by the genetic code which is relatively rigid.

The idea sounds very logical but theory has been controversial from the modern evolutionary synthesis, and it has not been easy to prove the occurrence of the phenomenon. Personally I'm going to start documenting my summer battles between weeds, slugs, and snails to keep my gardens healthy. 

The main limitation of the Baldwin effect from Hinton and Nowlan point of view (1984) is the fact this idea is only effective in spaces that would be difficult to find, very specific species to which it is possible to continue without an adaptive process of restructuring from the space. But for those biologists, who say that wilderness areas are well structured, the Baldwin effect is an important mechanism to allow adaptive processes within the body to greatly improve the space in which a species evolves.

This theory led me to find something else, and I returned to an old topic, Can you believe the evolution of brain processes has been best explained by theorists of artificial intelligence?.

Some researchers has the assumption that brain can adapt and learn from past experience, because the specific evolution is not only inherited behavior but adds inherited goals that are used to guide the learning under the orders of a genetic code that has two components in the species. The first component is a set of initial values to create a network of action which maps the sensory input to behavior, this is presented as a set of innate behaviors that are inherited from the parents (Stefano, Elman, and Parisi, 1994).

The example that comes to my mind is a newborn baby, who is beginning to recognize the environment, his initial reactions are sensory, as Piaget recognized from the last century. Some of these reactions begin to distinguish between the species, for example, reflexes are becoming more sophisticated, and some babies show signs of maturity, while others follow a different pattern of development.

The second component is a network of evaluation,  this focused action on the sensory input to a value scale that help to move from a bad to a good situation by changing its weight in the action of the network during the process and that the individuals maintain as learning goals (Stefano and Parisi 1994).

There is no a bigger pleasure than observing a baby who is in a dilemma. If he manages to control the motor actions and builds the network between look at an object and take it, how does he react when despite the same movements, but the object doesn’t move?. His first reaction is: hey, come to me, I am taking you!. Other babies will try it more than 5 times, while some observe the problem, and maybe one or two will try to solve the problem crying, explaining to the toy that mom will know soon about his rebelliousness and nobody plays with mom.

In this sense, it can be said that the evolution of neural networks contains information not only in genetic terms, but also a collection of behaviors developed by the ancestors and this can be understood as a culture(Dehaene, 2012, Conrad, 2004).

 

It is then that culture has a major role since the adaptations in the environment are not always determined by closed codes and therefore not can become stronger than those established by the selection (including the changes in the social environment). The best example of this is the language, since previously the specie was not dependent on the speech, until it begin to evolve the language skills, is so development processes that had not participated previously in the language can be selected object because of its effects on the acquisition of the language, resulting in the modification of older adaptations (Barret, 2012).

However, culture is not absorbed in the whole brain how explains Stanislas Dehaene (2004) in his theory of neuronal recycling, he says that cultural purchases can take place in a limited surface area bounded by the cerebral cortex. As an example, the author analyzes reading and arithmetic that have greater reproducibility in the neo cortex.

This idea has been explored in more than one research, for example in an article published by Conrad (2004) it presents a theory about the formation of the central nervous system based on the processing of information from the description of the molecular biological systems. He explains that the central nervous system consists of several types of unitary regions, of which there are many interchangeable replications.

Each region contains neurons whose power is determined by the enzymes that recognize the specific input patterns to that region specify by genes inherited or cultivated. Finally, the central nervous system has selection circuitry that put test and evaluation of different regions, determining control of the production of genes on the basis of such an assessment. 

At the same time, there are genes whose production is stimulated in a diffuse way in regions in which occur to transform other relevant regions of the same type. In this sense, the function of the molecules is the same in these new regions because the structure of the tissue and cell properties is the same. 

This makes possible a process of trial and error to learn mediated by the same mechanisms as the natural evolution, except that it is more efficient because the circuits of selection. Systems that operate on the previous basis are capable of performing any executable as a conventional computer, but with significant restrictions on the programming. Thus, these systems are also (structurally) simpler than more susceptible to learning and evolution and conventional information processing devices (Conrad, 2004; Changeux and Dehaene, 2000).

It seems during the evolution of the brain the properties of its tissues development are subject to evolutionary change from the effects on the phenotypes of the brain. This can be initiated by the changes in systems development (for example, through mutation), changes in the environment in which they develop (culture, environment), or both (Barret, 2012). 

An idea of how happens this is provided by Fernando, Szathmary, and Husbands (2012) who claims  that Darwinian evolution can happen in the brain during, for example complex thought, or the development of language in children, though nothing further than the level of the synapse is subject to Darwinian evolution in the brain. Which confirms the affirmation of Seung: we are our connectome.

Evolutionarily, the advantage of having algorithms of replication occurring by natural selectionis not observable to the naked eye, compared to the instrumental learning models (Fernando and Szathmary 2010). In fact, the notion of the dynamics of replication in the brain remains controversial and the creation of neural networks is a cost process that depends on technological development, example of this is the Blue Brain Project.

Artificial neural networks

Thus, the technological advances to make possible the creation of neural networks that tries to simulate the biological capacity to adapt and learn from past experience that has the brain. 

However, even for experts in neural networks, the task of explaining the learning mechanisms have not been easy, because as explain Iriki and Taoka, (2012) brain evolution has three essential components, one developed by multisensory integration (sight, hearing, smelling, feeling) and transformation of coordinates for the control of movements in the living space is an essential function of the nervous system (what is known as ecological niche). But this neural enhancement is not an isolated event, since it allowed the brain to move processing to the summary of information, through the implementation and reuse of the existing principles of information processing space that adapted to the subjection of mental functions and which ultimately led to the development of the language with which it was possible to communicate locations or spaces (which resulted in a cognitive niche). This was also useful handling of the image of the body in space, which became essential for the handling of tools, giving as a result the acceleration of interactive links between cognitive, neural bases cognitive and gave way to the third niche which is building.

Just in case here sounded a simple explanation, complex that a baby may formulate coordinated words, you must know how to use the tongue, move it in a coordinated manner, and learn to control the air, when it manages to dominate the difference between a sound and reaching a word to take the race to perfect this ability. I personally really enjoy these attempts, babies range from simple ma, pa, aba sounds to words: mom, wad, water. Once they have established that, begin to use the tools and parents are scared when they see the child with the Ipad or the cell phone in their possession, nothing more fun to do than using a pencil, or a touch screen. When parents learn to relax, and children send their first text message, or read their first book, tools have sense. Hence to describe the world.

This explains that a modified human environment exerts pressure on future generations to adapt to it, perhaps through the acquisition of new resources that have to adapt to the different organs, with which is possible to explain plasticity induced epigenetically (this term refers to the study of non-genetic factors involved in the development of an organism), including the development of mechanisms of learning involved in such processes. In this way, the additional genomic information can be transmitted between generations through mutual interactions between neuronal, ecological niches and cognitive domains. This scenario locates the brain as part of a comprehensive ecosystem in evolution (Iriki and Taoka, 2012).

It is so arises the neuroevolucion as a field of study, which seeks the creation of artificial neural networks (ANN) through evolutionary algorithms, and sometimes has focused its efforts on static neural networks that cannot change its function during lifetime, since these are the easiest to replicate (Miikkulainen, Feasly, Hohnson, Karpov, Rajagopalan, Rawal and Tansey, 2012; Gauci and Stanley, 2010).

However, a serious problem with the evolution of adaptive systems is that learning to learn is very misleading, as describe Risi, Hughes and Stanley (2010), because a principle is easier to improve physical condition without the ability to learn, evolve by that is not based on the heuristic adaptation. This is learning a stiff task with no greater decision making, which is a model away from reality. 

In their study, the authors find as a conclusion that novelty search has the potential to foster the emergence of adaptive behavior in reward based learning tasks, which opens up a new direction for research in the evolution of neural networks of plastic, which makes it more interesting and easy to learn adaptive behaviors that had been difficult to observe in human models.

But is Henry Markram, who has a good idea about this, he says brain has led billions of years evolve and has many rules, so the challenge of the neuroevolucion is to describe them carefully using mathematical laws and if it is possible to achieve that, the challenge will then be to build a realistic model of the brain (Kushner, 2012).

Brain and school

Although it sounds like a foolish, learning process has a long way, developing its own rules and the school as an institution should not ignore, but does it. The result is not only unhappily educated children, but jobless adults. But, there is no perfect educational system, even the brain has established laws, it modifies them generation after generation, trying to find a biological balance.

Of course, it’s possible to expect a programming expert to design an application that connects through an interface with a single click, so we could learn anything, even those for which we are not physically fit, as in the The Matrix movie, but while that happens, it is worth putting the brain in the classroom and understands its mechanisms. 

It is not my idea that teachers know neuroscience, that is not the goal, but at least I would like to explain to teachers when they  see a child with learning problems they can see him as a problem of education, since  the brain has adapted and survived on the face of the Earth much more better than any curriculum has done so. 

Part of that evolution implies as studies indicate, the brain changes all the time, and in this sense, if a child is not capable of running a task today, far from tag it, should think that under the correct strategies, he or she will do it, with their own pace, accuracy and specificity, different than others, after all, there is nothing more impressive being unique different and special.

The success of the brain is such that it has been able to look to infinity and beyond, the Moon was not its limit, right now is exploring Mars, has done its utmost, has grown, invented, fantasized and made possible what was thought impossible, in a 1130 cm³average space^., imagine now that they will be able to make many with a common goal: an effective teaching

 

Alma Dzib Goodin

If you would like to know more about my writing, you can visit my web site,
http://www.almadzib.com/

REFERENCES

Ackley D., and Littman, M. (1991) Interactions between learning and evolution. In Artificial life II, SFI studies in the sciences of complexity. Vol X edited by CG Langton, C Taylor, JD Farmer & S, Rasmussen. Addison –Wesley. United States

Barret, HC. (2012) A hierarchical model of the evolution of brain specializations. Proceedings of the National Academy of Science of the United States of America. 19 (Supl 1). 10733- 10740.

Biswal BB, Mennes M, Zuo XN, Gohel S, Kelly C, Smith, SM, Beckmann, CF, Adelstein, JS, Buckner RL, Colcombe S, et al (2010) Toward discovery science of human brain function. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 107 (10) 4734-4740 

Conrad, M. (2004) Evolutionary learning circuits. Journal of theoretical Biology. 46 (1) 167-188.

Dehaene, S. (2004) Evolution of human cortical circuits for Reading and arithmetic: the neuronal recycling hypothesis. In S. Dehaene, J. R. Duhamel, M. Hauser & G. Rizzolatti (Eds.), From monkey brain to human brain (2004). Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press.

Dehaene, S. (2011) The number sense: How the mind creates mathematics. Oxford University Press. USA.

Dzib Goodin, A (2012) Learning how we learn. Available at: http://talkingaboutneurocognitionandlearning.blogspot.com/2012/05/learning-how-we-learn.html

Fernando, C., and Szathmáry, E. (2010) Natural selection in the brain. In B., Glatzeder, V. Goel,  and A. Muller (Eds) Towards a theory of thinking: building blocks for a conceptual framework. Springer. Germany.

Fernando, C., Szathmáry, F., and Husbands, P. (2012) Selectionist and evolutionary approaches to brain function. A critical appraisal. Frontiers in Computational Neuroscience. 6 (Art. 24). Disponible en http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3337445/pdf/fncom-06-00024.pdf.

Gauci, J., and  Stanley, K.O. (2010) Autonomous evolution of topographic regularities in artificial neural networks. Neural Computation 22(7)  1860-1898.

Hinton, GE., and Nowlan, SJ. (1987) How learning can guide evolution. Complex Systems. 1. 495-502.

Iriki, A., and Taoka, M. (2012) Triadic (ecological, neural, cognitive) niche construction: a scenario of human brain evolution extrapolating tool use and language from the control of reaching actions. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society Biological Science. 367. 10-23.

James Mark Baldwin. A New Factor in Evolution. American Naturalist 30, (1896): 441-451, 536-553. Disponible en http://www.brocku.ca/MeadProject/Baldwin/Baldwin_1896_h.html

Krushner, D. (2011) The man who builds brains. The Brain, Discovery Magazine. Disponible en red: http://discovermagazine.com/2009/dec/05-discover-interview-the-man-who-builds-brains

Miikkulainen, R., Feasly, E., Hohnson, L. Karpov, I., Rajagopalan, P., Rawal, A., and Tansey, W. (2012) Multiagent learning through neuroevolution. Advances in Computational Intelligence. 7311. 24-46.

Nolfi, S., and Domenico Parisi (1994). Good teaching inputs do not correspond to desired responses in ecological neural networks. Neural Processing Letters 1 no. 2 (11/94) pp. 1-4.

Nolfi, S., Elman, J., and Domenico Parisi (1994). Learning and evolution in neural networks. Adaptive Behavior 2 (1994): 5-28.

Risi, S., Hughes, CE., y O Stanley, K. (2010) Evolving plastic neural networks with novelty search. Adaptative Behavior. 18 (6) 470-491.

 Seung, HS. (2012) Connectome: How the Brain's Wiring Makes Us Who We Are. New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcout.