I agree that we wouldn’t want children to be in a permanent state of acquiring flashbulb memories – that was an example to show that not all learning requires repetition. More generally, there’s one shot learning which is pervasive and I know for sure that many of the things I’ve learned haven’t required repetition for me to learn them. As I said before, there’s different ways of learning and focussing on just one (repetition) because we understand it slightly better is probably not a good idea for education (hence why reductionism may not be an appropriate strategy there).

As to politics – you have actually made two quite strong political assumptions: (1) that the purpose of education is to store facts in children’s brains in the most efficient way, (2) that high ability children should be identified and (presumably?) more resources allocated to them. These assumptions constitute a view of what education is for, and a technocratic, elitist one at that (which is unfortunately often the way with scientists with unexamined political assumptions).

Some died (or suffered other serious adverse drug reactions)
http://www.mhra.gov.uk/home/groups/es-foi/documents/foidisclosure/con2023292.pdf

Others suffered unpleasant side effects (type ritalin into MHRA search engine)
http://www.mhra.gov.uk/index.htm

@45 Clarice. You seem unwilling to accept the politics intrinsic in your opinion and to insist that anyone who doesn’t wholeheartedly agree with you is against you. Manicheanism, false dichotomy, call it what you like, its not adding to the debate because it simply leads to an ego-based slanging match. If you had a willy I’d call it willy-waving.

When education can be improved by known means it seems foolish to get too excited about the possibilities of a very new research area. That is all the sceptics on this thread are saying. I don’t think anyone would want to write off any future developments if they are useful, but its jam tomorrow, something all too common in schools.

Well let me spell it it out for you.

Dodgy science (partly driven by companies with a vested financial interest) based on unproven assumptions = more children on psychoactive medication.
Some regard such developments as a dangerous social experiment that ha proved damaging to a % of children;
http://www.vernoncoleman.com/ritalin.htm

So, if this is an example of science in action what other controversial practices might emerge if we fail to recognise neuroscience (in it’s present incarnation) as a limited, and peripheral tool when it comes to developing mainstream educational policies?

Yes, so would I – I imagine it will be on par with research demonstrating ‘blacks’ are smarter than ‘whites’
http://www.africaresource.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=528:race-intelligence-and-iq-are-blacks-smarter-than-whites&catid=105:genetics&Itemid=360

Or is it ‘whites’ are smarter than ‘blacks’
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article2677098.ece

I wish those pesky scientists would make their minds up?

@42 – ADHD – So what?

@ 44 Yes, there’s a massive amount of research evidence to show that rehearsal aids encoding in memory. Your question is a bit like asking if there’s any actual evidence that the earth goes round the sun! There’s also a great deal of evidence, for eg, that much mathematical processing relies in part on verbally encoded (ie rote-learned) material such as (but not only) times tables. And yes, there’s research showing that other things are important too (eg visuo-spatial ability).

As to “flashbulb” memory, that phenomenon relates to material of intense personal significance, and is due to being in a heightened emotional state – I’m not sure you really want to advocate having children hyper-aroused as a matter of course – the stress hormones really aren’t that good for you. In addition to which, there’s evidence that these memories aren’t in fact recalled any better than other material, if that material is repeatedly recalled in the same way as flashbulb mems are. Ooh, there’s that word repetition again. So no, not assumptions, just common sense, based on what we know.

We already know an awful lot about how learning works – in terms of acquiring content, conceptual understanding and skills. Which I suppose is rather dull for educationalists and politicians who want to make their names by amazing innovations. But the fact is, we already have a very good idea about what works and why. Since that isn’t on the whole being applied in educational settings, I suppose one shouldn’t really expect any further advances to be applied either.

It seems the problem is that the people “applying” science to education lack the understanding of the science to be able to do so correctly or sensibly.

There would only be political assumptions if I had made any commitment as to how the evidence should be interpreted – I didn’t. And I don’t share your view that education is necessarily political – it’s used as a political football, yes, but to its detriment, and to the detriment of the poor buggers on the receiving end, as well as to the economy.

Your comments about scientists understanding politics is a bit silly and irrelevant really. Politicians have a responsibility towards evidence-based policy if they want to do a good job, in addition to which they are necessarily driven by wanting to be re-elected. Scientists on the other hand have no such driving forces, only to the advancement of knowledge in their field. Scientists don’t dictate to politicians (though ideally their data should), whereas politicians do dictate to science (as well as education). You’re not comparing like with like, quite simply.

phenomena such as those you mention which in the vast majority of cases have very little place in an educational setting

Is this an assumption though? Or the result of any evidence? Isn’t there a danger in ruling out certain classes of learning? I can certainly think of examples of things I learnt in school that were flashbulb memories or examples of one-shot learning. They are relatively rare, but disproportionately significant.

In any case, these are just a handful of examples of ways in which we can learn, and without understanding how learning works more generally and more completely, how can we know which ways are more or less important? The danger in taking neuroscientific evidence as more complete than it is is that the context is very narrow – the types of learning that neuroscience has (and at the moment, can) study are quite restricted. Experimental protocols typically require repetition in order to average out noise, for example, and situations are highly simplified so that they can be understood better. It’s not clear that reductionist approaches common in science are appropriate for understanding education. (I don’t use the word reductionism pejoratively btw, it’s just an accurate description of the scientific approach.)

The solution to the link between socio-economic status and educational ability is not to push less able students through a system that then has to dumb down, but to identify the brightest children (regardless of background) so that all can fulfill their potential, whatever the limits of that potential may be. It is a sad fact of life that we aren’t all born with equal ability. This is not controversial in the fields of, say, sport, art or music – why is it a problem that it applies equally to academic subjects?

Aside from the false dichotomy, there are some disguised political assumptions in here which affect the way the evidence (such as it is) is interpreted. Suppose there are natural differences in ability – even if this is conceded it doesn’t tell us how significant they are in comparison to environmental differences, nor what we should do about them. I highly recommend Chris Dillow’s article on chess and IQ on this subject.

I think this whole debate just shows that educationalists haven’t got a clue what cognitive neuroscience is, or does. But why let that stand in the way of rubbishing it? The problem clearly is in how educationalists misuse science, rather than in the science itself.

Turning that around, doesn’t it also show that (some) scientists haven’t got a clue about politics? Sadly, that doesn’t stop them from weighing in with their opinions about how an obviously political thing as education should work. Again – I’m not being pejorative in describing education as political – it is necessarily political. There are different, mutually exclusive aims for education and educational policy, and these are important.

Matt,

As to the old cobblers about “Teachers label kids bright and they become bright” it been shown countless time that they pick out bright kids precisely because they are bright

I’d be interested to see the research on this.

oldandrew,

What is under attack here is the claim that the science can be expected to change policy, as if there were lots of untried teaching methods out there that willl be discovered when we know more about how the brain works.

I don’t think we should rule this out. We should rather be attacking the simplistic, overgeneralising attempts to apply scientific knowledge technocratically. Actually I’m optimistic that at some point we will understand the brain better and this will feedback into education. The point is that this is a long way off, and that anyway there are much bigger social and political issues to deal with in education first. The big picture here is that the way science is often used technocratically to focus our attention on minor details while we miss the huge political assumptions being made.

According to the CDC 4.5 MILLION American children were diagnosed with ADHD (in 2006)
http://www.cdc.gov/ncbddd/adhd/data.html

While the boom in ritalin prescriptions in the UK increased 9-fold over a 5 year period (according to this item)
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2000/apr2000/rit-a25.shtml

You do get that comparing people to heliocentrics and astrologers is more common among cranks than the advocates of great scientific innovations?

There’s a world of difference between being sceptical about people who claim their ideas are justified by science (or in this case, will be justified by science) and being sceptical about science. This is particularly important in education where arguments from the authority of “science” have been misused again and again to justify bad policies and bad practices.

Yeah, and what did we need the Heliocentric model of the solar system for when *astrologers* were perfectly capable of making predictions without it?

What could we possibly learn from knowing how things work?

What a mechanistic view of both children and education?

As Dan thesamover suggests [32] – there are far more important question to address, such as “the social aspects of why some children don’t learn” – surely we don’t need a big magnet to work that one out?

Who has rubbished the science? What is under attack here is the claim that the science can be expected to change policy, as if there were lots of untried teaching methods out there that willl be discovered when we know more about how the brain works.

I think this whole debate just shows that educationalists haven’t got a clue what cognitive neuroscience is, or does. But why let that stand in the way of rubbishing it? The problem clearly is in how educationalists misuse science, rather than in the science itself.

@32 Dan – you’re talking about completely different things. the conditions required for the abstraction of rules, or the aquisition of skills or concepts don’t need to explain other phenomena, especially phenomena such as those you mention which in the vast majority of cases have very little place in an educational setting. McClelland and Rummelhart aside, there is a massive literature of robust empirical research (though not all as sexy as neuroscience) that supports MM’s point.

@ 34 steveb – If you’ve spent any time at all teaching in universities over the past 12 years (as I have), you’ll know that a) standards of undergrad intake have plummeted and b) requirements for getting a degree have had to plummet accordingly. Lowering the selection criteria (ie the standards at A-level) has brought less able students in their thousands into a university system they are ill-suited and ill-equipped for, and the universities have had to muddle through the best they can. Maintaining the standards of attainment would have meant that vast numbers of the intake would fail their degrees. As a result, a degree now is not the same indicator of ability that it used to be. Employers hiring new graduates have had to learn the hard way that having expectations of ability based on a university education are no longer realistic. What a good idea removing selection from 11+ education was!

Matt Munro has it right – egalitarianism in education as it has been applied thus far serves no-one. The solution to the link between socio-economic status and educational ability is not to push less able students through a system that then has to dumb down, but to identify the brightest children (regardless of background) so that all can fulfill their potential, whatever the limits of that potential may be. It is a sad fact of life that we aren’t all born with equal ability. This is not controversial in the fields of, say, sport, art or music – why is it a problem that it applies equally to academic subjects?

The fact that IQ testing was, historically, based on fraud (not to mention a fair bit of racism and belief in eugenics) does not make it wrong. However, it does make it “flawed” which is the claim you objected to.

By all means suggest which results from IQ testing can be trusted and are useful as a basis for policy, and be prepared to justify any such claims. But please don’t bother to imply that such a policy has all the authority of science behind it and is simply being dismissed by a leftwing conspiracy.

Er I have a psychology degree so I’ve probably studied it a bit more than most people, and I passed an 11+. Yes, he possibly faked some data, that doesn’t mean his theory was wrong (see “climate change”). As to the old cobblers about “Teachers label kids bright and they become bright” it been shown countless time that they pick out bright kids precisely because they are bright – any teacher worth his salt knows the differing abilities of kids, the left just don’t want them to.

The figure I heard quoted about IQ, and it was from an IQ expert but may be out of date now, is that the correlation between one IQ test and another was the same as the correlation between IQ and height. In other words, you’d do about as well measuring people’s heights as bothering to go through all the effort of doing an IQ test. (And anecdotally, my girlfriend did 3 and got results varying between 105 and 150.)

Matt, I think Rumelhardt and McLelland is a little out of date now. IIRC it was based more on hypothesis than empirical work (which didn’t stop it being very interesting, foundational work). Repetition is important to learning in many cases, but obviously doesn’t explain phenomena such as flashbulb memories or one-shot learning.

Actually, these conclusions based on a lack of understanding of what the research says and what conclusions can safely be drawn from it illustrate quite well the dangers of premature application of neuroscience.

Absolute nonsense. There is a very strong correlation between IQ and academic acheivment (almost all medical graduates have an IQ of 130+ for example). Despite decades of the left trying to denigrate scientific measurement of IQ it is, if anything more widely used than ever – often dressed up as psychometric testing, or assesment centres – it is now routinely used in all sorts of organistion for recruitment and promotion.

IQ is a classic example of the left dismissing science which doesn’t fit with their egalitarian fantasy world.

If anything the opposite is true – neuroscience shows that chilldren learn through repitition, and after a certain amount of repitition they abstract “rules” about how the world works – extensive and highly regarded research on this in the context of language learning was done in the 1970s and 80s (Rimelheart, McClelland at al). It seems that the rote learning brigade had a point after all.

Perhaps the most pervasive nonsense ever promulgated by “progressive” education is the idea that children only learn when they “enjoy” it. It’s actually based on good observation (that children who enjoy learning, learn more) but the logic is backwards. Bright kids who learn relatively easily enjoy learning more than less bright kids that don’t enjoy it. The variable is intelligence, not “enjoyment”.

Because we’ve been here before so many times. Our school system doesn’t currently implement a fraction of what we already know about learning. There’s more interest in pseudo-science like Brain Gym than in the hard lessons of educational history or cognitive psychology. Therefore, genuine new discoveries are likely to make only a marginal difference to the large body of unutilised knowledge.

However, any cutting edge academic or scientific discipline, if it is presented uncritically as a source of immediately useful information, is likely to provide a new excuse for repackaging old ideas. What education needs is an end to the search for magic formulas that will make learning effortless and fun and provide a different experience to scientifically selected groups of students. We need to focus on deciding what knowledge we think children need to learn and how they can learn it most efficiently.

The most interesting one I have heard about was using fMRI to measure activation in response to ad reels, looking at brain activitation as a measure of ad salience and for differences between measured and reported levels of interest – since it is well known that ads do not have to produce conscious engagement to have an impact.

No one pretends that this study is the whole story, or that fMRI will take over everything, but it provides interesting new insights.

Why is education so defensive seemingly wanting to rule out the possibility of change to the status quo before conducting the experiment.