3.5 The Growing Brain

Educational implications: Tips and suggestions

If learners keep these tips in mind, thinking skills will be maximized. These tips provide practical, useful information about the brain. Read them aloud with students and discuss them.

1–The brain builds itself.

The brain builds neural assemblies. Some of the neural assemblies, like the ones for vision, are time-sensitive and become hard-wired. Some remain modifiable over a lifetime, like those for learning. The brain’s neural assemblies are blueprinted by genetics and realized by experience.

The brain’s capacity for self-construction, integration and self-correction distinguishes these neural assemblies. Individual learning styles bring the brain’s self-regulatory abilities into high relief. For individual learning styles to emerge, the learning environment must be flexible and rich, providing a range of sensory experiences, including visual, tactile and verbal exploration.

Brains require nutrients and stimulation to grow and flourish. By studying brain science and other fields connected with physical and mental growth, we can determine what experiences and substances are most likely to contribute to healthy brains. Cross-modal learning creates more connected and efficient brains. Cross-modal learning increases feelings of success and control. Feelings of success and control increase the amounts of natural substances in brains that make them feel good and increases the brain’s tolerance for sustained, productive work. “Natural highs” provide alternatives to other approaches to stimulation which may damage important brain connections.

2–Each brain is different.

Each brain self-constructs, using inherited blueprints and experience. Although the blueprints for the wiring plan may be more or less alike in human brains, the wiring pattern of each brain is unique for several reasons: one is the indeterminability of the exact path any neuron will take as it burrows through brain tissue; another is the result of individual human experiences, especially with people and language in the world.

Each brain has more neurons than the Milky Way has stars, or hundreds of billions. As each neuron noses its way through brain tissue, “sniffing out” its proper site, a random function associated with the growth-cone at the tip of the neuron insures the fact that no two brains can be wired exactly the same, even in identical twins. This characteristic of the central nervous system is called “irreproducability” (Changeux, 1985; Rosenfield, 1988). The sheer number of neurons, along with the random function, creates individuality at the neural level. Experience, including educational experience, creates individuality on a mental/emotional level thereafter.

Each individual brain not only functions differently from every other brain, but, at any moment, that brain can change its own approaches to thinking, dramatically changing its own metabolic profile as well as its neural nets and their level of connectivity. The extraordinary point emphasized by this book is the degree to which the variability of the brain remains in the control of the learner for a lifetime.

3–There are critical periods for brain growth.

Just before birth, the brain makes more neurons than it needs. Soon after birth, the brain makes more connections than it needs. A continual rhythmic firing literally constructs the brain. Exuberant synaptogenesis subsides; connections are pruned in response to experience and learning. The brain’s wiring systems for vision, language, attention, emotion, and motor skills stabilize. Many of the most significant connections are forged for life by the age of three years—some, by six months.

The brain’s wiring remains modifiable for learning; but there is a Catch-22: the feedback loop. The quality of the learning determines the quality of the wiring, and non-modifiable wiring systems determine some of the brain’s future learning capabilities. If a baby is born with cataracts and they are not removed, the baby’s ability to see as an adult will be limited. Because visual networks stabilize when children are young and because visual learning remains so important, the quality of children’s visual stimulation at the pre-school and elementary levels of education is very important. Other early experiences persist, too, including attitudes about other people and the world.

4–The brain grows in stages.

Some brain systems mature and stabilize before others can mature and stabilize. The timing between two interdependent systems is sometimes so close that several systems develop almost simultaneously. The exact timing or order of multiple maturations is indeterminable. No two brains grow in exactly the same way at the same time. Classroom expectations for “developmental milestones” must be flexible.

5–Exploratory problem-solving helps the brain to grow.

Physical exploration using all of the senses, particularly touch, encourages brain growth.

The more physically the brain approaches a problem, the more clearly formed and fully dimensional the solution to that problem will be. Exploratory problem-solving not only streamlines neural assemblies (Greenough et al, 1987, 1992), it also increases the production of myelin, the fast-axon insulator.32 A better wiring system for problem solving is pared-down, densely associative, and very fast. The brain needs the explorations of the body to grow.

6–Feelings of control help the brain to grow.

Feelings of well-being and brain growth correlate. A child who feels helpless and victimized may grow up with an underdeveloped limbic system. The adult may experience problems with controlling rage.

A sense of control encourages the growth of the limbic system which makes a broad range of controllable emotions possible. Educational strategies which play to children’s strengths—like drawing—increase feelings of success and control.

7–Experience affects the brain’s potential and keeps modifying the brain for learning.

Brains deprived of sufficient stimulation or abused by injury or trauma can be 20% to 30% smaller than average. The brain thrives on activity; it atrophies from disuse. An under-used or abused brain develops poorly and works poorly. For the human brain to grow, the body needs cuddling and play, and the mind requires personal, direct, interesting conversation. Language experience is particularly important.

Experience modifies neural networks. Although many systems in the brain stabilize, becoming largely unmodifiable, neural changes in response to learning occur over a lifetime. It is possible to construct a better brain at any time. It is most effective to lay down patterns for effective thinking skills early in childhood, just as it is most effective to learn to ski, ride a bike or speak a foreign language when we are young.

As a self-correcting system, the brain can repair itself by using old areas in new ways, new areas in old ways, and new areas in new ways. Because of a phenomenon described as “neural drift,” a functional brain area is able to infiltrate and remediate a dysfunctional area. This information is especially relevant for remedial education. A strength helps a weakness. For instance, left hemisphere damage is compensated for by right hemispheric strengths. By inference, the “ drawing part” of the brain should be able to substitute for the “writing part.” All students can take advantage of the brain’s repairability and flexibility by determining their own special strengths through experimentation. To do so, the learning environment must be informed and flexible. Then, students can use their strengths to their best advantage.

8–Bodily experience helps the brain to construct mental maps including language.

Spatial understanding helps direct actions of the eyes, hands, and feet. The geometry of physically experienced space becomes a frame of reference for the brain's sensorimotor maps. This spatial understanding precedes and undergirds multiple levels of linguistic understanding. Educators are apt to dichotomize non-linguistic and linguistic systems of representation—like art and language. Language systems are continuous with each other and depend upon each other for structure and information. The premise of this book is that writing, reading and mathematics skills benefit from training in drawing. Neural systems for representing meaning are scaffolded. This means that drawing, writing and mathematics are interconnected systems and can and should be taught integratively.

9–The brain is redundant.

Brains have more processing power than is necessary, making recovery from damage and compensation for damage possible. The fact that the brain is equipped with a margin for error insures its repairability, recoverability, and modifiability—in short, its resourcefulness. This is important and useful information.

10–Visual searches help the brain grow.

An innate predisposition toward order described in this book as “deep grammar,” or the Form of the form, stimulates visual searches. Visual searches organize the brain for language. A “grammar for intelligent thought” organizes incoming stimuli. This spatial grammatical system extends itself to the brain’s linguistic systems. Exposure to language triggers language. Then, specific cultural codes or grammars for mother tongues become influential.

With no previous exposure to or training in visual searches, babies conduct visual/physical searches. The flailing of arms and legs and the instinctual motions of the eyes quickly become purposeful and informative. New information organizes the brain in new ways. Visual searches and brain growth constitute a feedback loop.

As the brain's visual system matures, the brain’s ability to make distinctions sharpens. The visual system becomes adept at determining the edges of things. Once the brain is able to determine where one thing stops and another begins, the brain can make comparisons. By comparing and contrasting information, the brain determines similarities and differences, providing the basis for analysis.

The way the brain learns to conduct visual searches profoundly influences the brain's mental and emotional growth. The visual system, the emotional or limbic system, and the ability to form attachments are interconnected. The early visual ability to make distinctions between light and dark, between edges of objects and surrounding space, lays the cognitive foundation for more general abilities, like recognizing a person’s face as familiar or appealing, or, as the child matures, choosing between two alternatives.

Drawing trains the brain’s visual system to search for and to identify and to recognize distinctions, to make comparisons and, ultimately, to make value judgments among alternatives in preparation for forming intelligent attachments. This training establishes a grammar of intelligent thought , or a procedure for order.

11–Storing memories in more than one way creates stronger, more accessible memories.

The same information can be stored and accessed in different ways. A child can create and access information about an object—like a bird’s wing—by drawing it, talking about it, writing about it, reading about it, dancing about it, remembering stories about it, making metaphors and similes, analogies, predictions and hypotheses about it. With this broad knowledge base in place, a child can access the bird’s wing by selecting the mental directory labeled “bird” or “wing” or any of a host of other personal associations.

12–Comparisons help the brain to organize and categorize, or recognize, information.

Some of the templates for comparison are determined by the senses. Spoken and written languages use similar strategies as do spatial information systems including vision. “Saccades”(sah-cahds) describe the infinitesimal, back-and-forth scanning motion of the eyes. This scanning movement “refreshes” an image by re-stimulating the visual cells in the retina. On a mental level, saccades may provide the neural basis for comparing and constrasting information.

One thing may be darker or lighter than another, more or less defined at the edges, larger or smaller, stiller or more in motion. At linguistic levels, one object may be more or less important than another or more or less interesting. The deliberate use of comparative strategies including simile, metaphor and analogy contribute to the grammer of intelligent thought. Comparative strategies can become saccade-like if they are practiced until they become automatic.

13–Language is central to thought.

Dynamic systems exhibit orderly behavior. Apparent chaos or messiness is an aspect of highly organized systems and is intrinsic to their complexity.

The brain executes numerous processes simultaneously. How the brain mobilizes organizational strategies determines the quality and usefulness of its highly complex processes. This book maintains that a systematic parts-to-whole, concrete to abstract, visual to verbal strategy is brain-like and teachable, and describes this cumulative strategy as an orderly system, or “grammar of intelligent thought.” The five-step program outlined in Part 2 demonstrates that this dual language system can be established through consistent training in integrative cross-modal processes like Drawing/Writing.

Currently, many brains receive waves of visual stimuli passively, indiscriminately, uncritically. To protect itself from unresolved messiness—to organize and assess this information—the brain requires tools, most especially language. Language is a major organizational tool.

Health implications

The vulnerable brain

Certain substances alter consciousness, feelings and behavior; some of these substances are useful, some are harmful or even lethal. Alcohol, nicotine, and cocaine reduce oxygen supplies to the brain, kill cells and cause addiction. Noise can damage the brain as well. Exposure to too many decibels of sound destroys nerve cells in the outer ear. Like war veterans, many teenagers have lost 20% or more of their hearing.

What we see, hear, smell, touch, and eat makes us who we are. What we fail to do with our bodies also registers in our brains. The brain is a complicated, finely woven web of connections. Synapses shrink and close over from lack of stimulation. An inactive brain is less connected.

Certain diseases, like Alzheimer’s and schizophrenia, shred neural connections like confetti. Exploratory, successful, complicated activities weave neural connections like tapestries. If we learn about our brains, we will be less likely to damage them.

The invulnerable brain

The brain is protected from blows and dangerous chemicals by the hard bones of the skull, the tough envelope of the meninges containing a liquid cushion of cerebro-spinal fluid, and the blood-brain barrier which excludes certain chemicals from the brain. Still, foreign chemicals invade the brain disquised as recognizeable molecules. Dangerous learning experiences can enter the brain, too, through the eyes and ears far more easily than masquerading molecules. The more we know about how we think, the better able we will be to provide our brains with healthy experiences.

TIPS ON HOW TO LOSE IT

Failure to practice thinking

Certain drugs encourage brains to “space out,” lessening motivation for action including problem solving. Eventually, through disuse, the synapses for purposeful action and analytical thinking thin out, shorten up, and close over, like dimples in dough. The neural nets can be rewoven and the synapses recreated. But it takes time and work.

Minute changes

The brain is a mass of excitable cells intricately emmeshed in circuitry (the “laminated neuropil”). Minute changes in brain chemistry and structure have large-scale effects (chaotic behavior). Educational strategies can capitalize on this information. Drug dealers depend on it. The transmitter theory of substance addiction targets the synapse as the receptor site for psychoactive drugs (Heynman, 1996).

Active self-destruction

Some brains on drugs think they can fly, which is not true. Some drugged brains damage themselves through seizures or violent physical action. Some drugged brains cut off their own oxygen supply, causing massive cellular death resulting in shut-down of the entire system—brain and body.

School-based drug education programs generally provide the following information:

Common inhalants: fast-drying glues and cements; paints, lacquers, varnishes, thinners and removers; lighter and dry cleaning fluids; kerosene and lantern and stove fuel; fingernail, shoe and furniture polish; typewriter correction fluids; felt-tip marking pens; aerosol cans. symptoms of use include lack of coordination, lack of inhibitions, nausea, vomiting, violent behavior. Effects range from mild dizziness to total unconsciousness, even death. Symptoms of overdose include brain damage, abnormalities in liver and kidney, damage to the stomach lining and to bone marrow activity, permanent damage to muscles and nerve cells leading to difficulties with balance, walking and even sitting, suffocation, coma, even death.

Narcotics are opiates—including cocaine, heroin, morphine, codeine, opium. They are used therapeutically as pain killers. Because they are powerfully addictive, narcotics they have a high potential for abuse. Narcotics provide sensations of euphoria; overdoses result in pulmonary edema (lungs filling up with water), respiratory arrest, convulsions, coma, possible death. Symptoms of withdrawal include diarrhea, tremors, chills, shakes, muscle jerks, cramps, nodding sleep.

Depressants, or “downers,” include barbituates (Seconal, Nembutal), Benzodiazepines (Valium, Lib-rium) and alcohol. These drugs are sedatives and tranquilizers. They depress the central nervous system producing a calming effect or sleep. They are highly addictive. Symptoms of use include relaxation, loss of inhibition, lack of concentration, slurred speech, staggering, confusion. Symptoms of overdose include hypertension, coma, possible death. Alcohol kills neurons in the brain. Symptoms of withdrawal include severe anxiety, agitation, hallucination, tremors, shakes, delirium, convulsions, even death.

Stimulants include amphetamines, phenmetrazine (Preludin), and methylphenidate (Ritalin). Symptoms of use include agitation, excessive activity, argumentativeness, euphoria, insomnia, loss of appetite, foul breath, hallucinations. Symptoms of overdose include cardiac arrhythmia, convulsions, coma, possible death. Symptoms of withdrawal include voracious hunger, muscular aches, abdominal pain, chills, tremors, prolonged sleep, exhaustion, depression.

Hallucinogens include LSD, PCP, STP, mescaline, and psilocybin. Symptoms of use are visual hallucination, confusion, paranoid delusions, euphoria, anxiety, panic. Symptoms of overdose include extreme hyperactivity, violence, psychosis, convulsions, possible death. Symptoms of withdrawal are minimal and may include flashbacks.

Tobacco: Besides depositing tar in the lungs, tobacco is a vaso-constrictor. It cuts off oxygen to the brain, and can cause anoxia, black-outs or fainting.

Alcohol: Medical consequences of alcoholism include liver damage, heart damage, esophageal bleeding and tearing, gastritis or swelling of the lining of the stomach, and stomach ulcers. Brain damage includes degeneration of the cerebellum which controls for coordinated movement. This damage is not reversible. Athletes run the risk of losing these skills permanently. Alcohol raises blood pressure which can result in strokes (brain damage caused by burst blood vessels in the brain). Because alcohol causes violent behavior and lessened coordination, the brain may suffer from secondary causes, like damage from a bullet, or spinal cord damage from a car accident. Cancer risks may increase for breasts, the larynx, the esophagus, the lungs. Alcohol raises the risk for lung cancer because heavy drinkers often smoke heavily, too.

Marijuana is a difficult drug to classify. Some users experience it as a mild hallucinogen, some as a sedative. It is used by doctors as an anodyne and as a mild tranquilizer for everything from menstrual cramps to migraine headaches. It is a difficult drug for doctors to gauge. It cannot be injected but it can be ingested and smoked. When smoking marijuana, it is difficult to tell how much is being inhaled and absorbed. It decreases interocular pressure in glaucoma sufferers; it decreases nausea and increases appetite in AIDS and cancer patients; it lowers blood pressure; it increases the heart rate moderately; it dilates vessels in the eyes causing the reddening of the eyes; it mitigates epileptic seizures.

The psychoactive effects of marijuana are subtle and include a sense of well-being which is heavily dependent on the situation and expectations of the user. Marijuana heightens sensations of color, sounds, patterns and textures, distorts time and space, slows the passage of time, and often creates a dream-like or fantasy state. “Mellow” is a word often used by marijuana users to describe the state it produces. Positive symptoms of use: relaxation, talkativeness, appetite. Negative symptoms: loss of concentration, loss of motivation. Symptoms of overdose: fatigue, paranoia, hallucinations, possible psychosis.

Damage to the lungs: Because the smoke is held in the lungs, one marijuana joint puts five times the tar of a cigarette in the lungs. One hundred of the 421 chemicals in marijuana are irritating to the lungs and can cause severe bronchitis. Inflammation of the bronchial tubes causes thickening of the tubes and a loss of hair cells that sweep congestion out of the lungs. Mucus builds up, causing difficult breathing, chest pain, fever and coughing. Marijuana smoke also contains 150 complex hydrocarbons, some of which cause precancerous growths. Marijuana often contains mold and other disease-carrying organisms, like salmonella. These germs go deep in the lungs and cause infection, even death.

Damage to the heart: Increased heart rate puts stress on blood vessels and the heart. Dilated blood vessels may cause a drop in blood pressure. Marijuana users have bloodshot eyes because the tiny blood vessels in the whites of their eyes dilate. Many users wear dark glasses to hide this.

Damage to the brain: Chemicals in marijuana widen the synapses between nerve cells, making synaptic communication difficult. These chemicals cause dense material to build up, clogging synapses. Clogging causes packets of neurotransmitters to clump up and become inactive, hampering activity inside cells, especially the synthesis of protein. Interference with protein production interferes with thinking, making it difficult to learn anything or remember what happened the day before.

Damage to males: Marijuana reduces testosterone necessary for boys to sexually mature into men. It may sustain or it may inhibit erections and lower sperm count, making it difficult or impossible to father children. Marijuana-damaged sperm may produce males with birth defects. If boys start using marijuana at age 10, often they may be smaller, less able to grow a beard, have reduced drive, and show poorer muscle development.

Damage to females: Marijuana elevates testosterone levels, causing dark body hair, facial hair, acne; it disrupts the menstrual cycle and may interfere with ovulation. Eggs and the developing fetus are vulnerable to the active ingredients in marijuana. Fetuses may exhibit the same effects as FAS, or Fetal Alcohol Syndrome including attention deficits and learning disabilities. Marijuana increases chances of miscarriage; it causes lower birth weight, and it may result in male babies with deformed genitals. Marijuana’s influence is on-going, since it will pass to the baby through the mother’s milk.

Suppression of immune system: Marijuana weakens the immune system, opening the body to infection, especially lung infections, and extending the period necessary for recovery from bronchitis, flu or colds.

Marijuana is called a “gateway drug” because it may lead users to try other drugs.

In combination with alcohol or street drugs, marijuana may cause such bodily slowing that the user stops breathing.

Influences behavior, performance and personality: Physical appearance becomes sloppy; workdays are skipped; there is a backing away from family and friends; reactions slow, which makes driving hazardous. Job skills slip. Panic attacks occur. Judgment and confidence slip away.

An actual or potential marijuana user must consider all of these options carefully and balance certain kinds of pleasure against certain kinds of liabilities or damage.

Harvard is currently conducting a five-year study on marijuana use.

Healthy brains and natural highs:
New information for school-based drug education programs

There is no evidence that activities like drawing, writing or analytical thinking cause body-organ damage or brain damage. In fact, the contrary is true. There is direct scientific evidence from animal enrichment studies that challenging activities—mental and physical—organized around visual searches of interest, or through internal visualizing, result in enhanced brain connectivity.

Hooked the natural way

A healthy brain requires adequate oxygen, glucose, neurotransmitters, visual searches of interest, challenging but not too challenging problems, verbal stimulation, close, nurturing human contact, and a physically fit body. Being physically fit, feeling interested, smart and capable may be enough for our brains, but it is evidently not enough for our minds. We need to feel loved and we need to feel really good. We crave “highs.” Or, as my nineteen year old daughter, Sarah, commented, “We need to transcend.”

“Self-directed, cross-modal learning” may sound like a pretty pedantic term for a set of combined drawing and writing exercises. But self-directed, cross-modal learning is, in fact, an exciting proposition, and, properly implemented, lays the foundations for feelings of extraordinary well-being including those rare and precious moments of transcendence and joy.

Natural highs

Physical exercise re-leases the brain’s natural opiates. The release of natural endorphins is addictive. Runners get hooked on running because it makes them feel good. Meditation and the arts provide heightened states of alertness and peacefulness. People practice both for the same reason: feeling good. The renowned alpha wave characterizes the brain waves of painters and meditators. We can feel good after we run, and we can feel good while we are painting and meditating. We have other agendas for running, painting and meditating, but part of the impulse is the in-the-moment at-oneness we experience during such activities. These states signal heightened neural/mental events. Neurally, transcendence may correlate with resolution, or settling into minimal energy states. Mentally, transcendence is ecstatic peace or “feeling good.”

There are many routes to heightened attention and a sense of profound well-being. Athletics, the arts and brain science point the way. Pleasure and education can go hand in hand. Beyond cognitive benefits, there are social and ethical benefits to a pleasurable education.

Opening the black box

For many years, the brain remained a “black box.” It was closed and its sides were opaque. At last, the black box of the brain is opening, and we glimpse a treasure chest.

In 1996, the magazine Newsweek featured the child’s brain twice as cover story news. It did so again in 1997 (Begley). Time magazine featured babies’ brains, too, early in 1997 (Nash). The New Yorker featured an article on brains and violent behavior in the early spring of 1997 (Gladwell).

It is not new that learning takes practice. What is new is this: the mind can practice so that it develops fast, integrative parallel processing, focused attention, broadly retrievable information bases including memories, and an array of all-purpose, transferable logical operations; or, the mind can practice and practice and not learn anything.

By learning one simple strategy—how to sustain attention—considerable emotional and cognitive re-serves become accessible. In fact, attentional/integrative activities constitute the neurobiology of an intelligent mechanism. It is this mechanism which Drawing/Writing sets in motion.

The brain and the Self

The following quote from an article by Walter J. Freeman, Professor of Physiology and Anatomy at the University of California, Berkeley provides closure to this section on neurobiology: “Wholeness refers to progressive growth of the self, from embryo to fetus to birth, childhood, adulthood and into old age. The self has a certain potential in this trajectory, which may or may not be realized. But the intent in this process of stretching forth is to realize the maximum potential, and the purpose of the striving of individuals is to achieve their maximal state of being.

“Each new insight creates a change that involves everything. One of the best pieces of evidence for the global nature of the learning process involves a release of hormones—norepinephrine, dopamine, acetlylcholine, histomine, serotonin and uncounted neuropeptides—and the systems that release these hormones are global ones that project throughout the cerebrum. When hormones are released, they soak the brain, they drench it. So a learning experience involves the entirety of both hemispheres.

“The intentional structure is a synaptic web which is drenched in neuro modulators, and which is a continual process of reaching out into the environment to incorporate new input. The dynamical systems have two aspects. One is the external aspect in which the animal or person is engaged in activity. That is the self which is doing things. The other aspect is the internal monitoring of the system, and that’s consciousness.”

Each of us must reach out into the world, as we can, creating of that external world what we can. As we reach out, we monitor and modify our constructions against previous ideas and experiences. We also encounter other people’s thinking, adjusting ours to theirs when required. To some degree, our perceptions and those of the people we live and work with must tally. Pictures and words help us to express, adjust and share our worlds.

This reaching out and this monitoring is called “intentionality”: our will to know and be known, our will to communicate and to understand, our will to act and to interact—these are our intentions. Childhood, early education and on-going education determine, in part, the degree to which we maximize our mental potential. Our brains and our selves are up to us. Words and images are two sets of tools for our self-creation.

Drawing, writing and therapy

Self-creation and self-knowledge go hand in hand. The therapeutic uses of drawing and writing are well-known. Many therapists use drawing and writing in their practices. Greg Albert, a twenty-nine year old Continuing Education student in early childhood education has climbed the staircase out of his past through drawing and writing. For Greg, writing opened the “shadowy box” of “stuffed down” feelings.

Greg was taught by an art therapist to draw boxes in perspective. Journals became a routine part of his recovery when another therapist asked him to write down his memories and thoughts. In the past seven years, Greg has filled 15 journals. Recently, he has added “diamonds” to the boxes and is “stacking” the boxes. In addition, he is drawing dynamic spirals.

The fact that Greg draws the dynamic spiral of life and writes poems courageous enough to express the ambiguous reality of family love attest to his growth. Greg’s example supports the therapeutic usefulness of drawing and writing to the survival of the human mind and body. In the following poem, the phrase “knows no boundaries” does not mean that love is limitless in the usual sense, but that hurtful family love recognizes no boundaries between family members.

Therapy is a lifelong process. It is the on-going business of the self. Like the brain, the self constructs itself over and over again. To do so, it requires tools for self-reflection, like Greg’s “small water.” The activities of drawing and writing are integral to this business. Diaries are not the exclusive property of young girls. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, men as well as women kept journals, especially travelogues which often included drawing and watercolor sketches. Drawing/Writing journals persist as companions to those who intended to live an examined life.

Lighting the black box

In many ways, the brain still remains a “black box.” In 1986, the pioneering work by David Andrews, professor of psychology at Keene State College, pointed the way toward educational applications of brain science. Andrews used EEG’s of dyslexic boys’ adolescent brains to encourage these students to experiment with their brain processes. Until MRIs become routine diagnostic procedures in the classroom, we cannot peek into students’ brains to catalog developmental delays or damage, underworked or overworked brain areas, mono- or bilateral strategies, gifts or genius. We can, however, appreciate the fact that every brain is a renewable, modifiable, extraordinary resource, and we can do everything in our power to maximize learning experiences for children’s brains. We can observe attentive, excited faces; we can gauge the success of our tactics by observing demonstrable changes in drawing, writing, reading and speaking skills.

This book provides a strategy based on brain research for solving the conundrum of the “black box.” Without referring to brain scans, students’ brains can be remediated and enriched in demonstrable ways that are clear to both teachers and students. After a session of Drawing/Writing, the drawings and writings of talented and gifted students show gains, as do the drawings and writings of students with deficits or delays, as well as those of the “average” student. In fact, these categories no longer remain distinct. In a Drawing/Writing classroom, descriptions like gifted, limited, or average are far less useful than words like attentive, engaged, productive, and literate. The telling evidence of growth, the real indications of caliber of mind are the selectivity, integration, and innovation demonstrated by students’ drawing and writings, and by their increased thoughtfulness, expressivity, judiciousness, and tolerance. Even if the box of the brain remains shadowy, the area around it can shine with light. In a neuroconstructivist classroom, teachers and students are this light.