D. USING MEMORY, AS CRUCIBLE—NOT JUST A CONTAINER
“To him [Erasmus], memorizing was far more than a means of storage. It was the first step in a process of synthesis, a process that led to a deeper and more personal understanding of one’s reading . . . Memory, for Seneca as for Erasmus, was as much a crucible as a container. It was more than the sum of things remembered. It was something newly made, the essence of a unique self.” (178-9)
Saturday, January 8, 2011
Friday, January 7, 2011
Balance: Conversations with Colleagues about THE SHALLOWS
C. BALANCING MINDS
We are losing our ability to balance efficient retrieval of information and open-ended reflection. (166-8)
We are losing our ability to balance efficient retrieval of information and open-ended reflection. (166-8)
Wednesday, January 5, 2011
Schema: Conversations with Colleagues about THE SHALLOWS
B. CREATING CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORKS
Deep understanding comes from transferring our “cognitive load” of information from working memory into long term memory—a process central to forming schemas or patterns of concepts. The internet’s encouragement of “extraneous problem-solving” and “divided attention” (see A above) overburden the memory load and undermine our ability to create meaningful schema. (123-6)
p.s. Carr imagines transferring information from working memory to long-term memory as filling a bathtub with a thimble. His analogy informed my decision to offer these talking points one at a time, over several days.
Deep understanding comes from transferring our “cognitive load” of information from working memory into long term memory—a process central to forming schemas or patterns of concepts. The internet’s encouragement of “extraneous problem-solving” and “divided attention” (see A above) overburden the memory load and undermine our ability to create meaningful schema. (123-6)
p.s. Carr imagines transferring information from working memory to long-term memory as filling a bathtub with a thimble. His analogy informed my decision to offer these talking points one at a time, over several days.
Tuesday, January 4, 2011
Conversations with Colleagues about THE SHALLOWS: Introduction
Last summer, I read Nicholas Carr's book, The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains (see July 2010 post about this book).
This month, BAY School colleagues and I are holding a series of conversations about ideas from that book.
This week, I will be posting the topics one or two at a time.
As the conversations occur, I may post summaries and/or reflections.
Below is the title and first topic from the sheet I recently distributed to colleagues.
(The "attached excerpts [from Carr's book]" will not appear in any of these posts.)
(The "attached excerpts [from Carr's book]" will not appear in any of these posts.)
Nicholas Carr’s The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains (Norton 2010)
What do you think about any of these ideas I have quoted or summarized from Carr’s book?
For example, which ones seem true to your personal experience or your work with students?
Carr’s context for each idea appears in the attached excerpts.
A. SUSTAINING CONCENTRATION
“The redirection of our mental resources, from reading words to making judgments [about which links to click or sidebars to read], may be imperceptible to us—our brains are quick—but it’s been shown to impede comprehension and retention, particularly when it’s repeated frequently . . . Our ability to make the rich mental connections that form when we read deeply and without distraction remains largely disengaged.” (122)
Friday, December 17, 2010
"The Rocks of Recklessness"
The last day before vacation presents challenges in a building teeming with teenagers. The writing exercise described below engaged students more than I had anticipated.
In an upper level literature elective, "The Drama of Math and Science," we had first read Inherit the Wind. As preparation for Marlowe's Faust, we read the morality play, Everyman.
To end the week, teams of students wrote a short scene in the manner of a morality play.
A scene from the Moral Play, “The Rocks of _____________”
After their ship has narrowly escaped shipwreck on the Rocks of ____________,
several shipmates discuss why they almost crashed their vessel and how they can avoid such danger in the future. (Fill in the blank with a noun that reflects the mindset(s) or behavior(s) that caused the ship to nearly shipwreck.)
Choosing two or three characters from the lists below (at least one from each list), write a page or two of the shipmates’ dialogue. Follow the formatting used by our text of Everyman.
LIST ONE
KINDNESS
HONESTY
BOUNDARIES
RESPECTFUL RELATIONSHIP
CLEAR MIND
HEALTHY BODY
KIND SPEECH
DIVERSITY
COMMUNICATION
GENEROSITY
PATIENCE
LIST TWO
WASTEFULNESS
RUSHED JUDGMENT
HOARDING
ANGER
ILL WILL
BULLYING
GOSSIP
INTOXICATION
ABUSE
THIEVERY
DECEPTION
Saturday, November 13, 2010
Wired for Poetry
This piece originally appeared in the BAY School of San Francisco's monthly newsletter (April 2009). Given my recent letter to The New York Times, I decided to re-publish the essay here.
Wired for Poetry
Poetry is an art form—that started a long time ago. It is still an elder among the creative arts. We can also say that the essentials of poetry overlap significantly with the basic ways the human brain learns. According to our modern and blossoming neurobiological understandings, the human brain is a natural poetry machine. I can’t help but recall the time my three-year-old nephew held up high a peeled banana at breakfast and exclaimed, “Look, the moon.”
In July 2005, after Bay School’s first academic year, faculty members attended a conference called “Teaching to the Teenage Brain.” Ever since, notes from that week have informed my work with students. According to the conference leader, Gesner Geyer, an enriched learning environment matches teaching practice to the nature of how the brain learns. Recently, I have come to understand how well humans are wired for poetry. Geyer’s summary of recent scientific knowledge proposes that, fundamentally, the brain learns in six ways:
By associating (linking, connecting) new information to existing knowledge
By shaping those associations into patterns
By making meaning (e.g., from these patterns)
through emotions (that work as relevance detectors)
through the body
mostly beneath the level of awareness
As just one example of alignment between poetry and the brain, consider metaphor, a basic building block of poetry. Through metaphor, we associate something unknown, unfamiliar or puzzling (like love or separation) with something our brain knows (like the scent of a rose or the stacked stones of a wall). This year’s sections of the Poetry course focused on three essentials: sound, imagery and metaphor. Through both reading and writing poems, students regularly circled back to each element in order to build an understanding of its special potential. They read poems from the ancient Near East and Far East, from medieval Europe and from the modern Americas. They wrote in meter and free verse. They analyzed published poems and reflected on their own original compositions. Each student was responsible for leading a class on a poet of his or her choosing. In these sessions, classmates learned about subjects such as World War Two’s effect on Tadeusz Rozewicz (Poland), modern industrialization’s impact on Wordsworth’s Lyrical Ballads (England) and the playful criticism of Billy Collins (United States). As a final project, both sections of the course produced a book for the school’s library. These books contain separate chapters from each student. The first half of each chapter contains two published poems and that student’s analysis of how these two poems “talk” to each other. In the chapter’s second half, each student includes an original poem, as well as an essay explaining plans, discoveries and final reflections from the process. The samples in this newsletter come from the class presentations and the book chapters. As always, it has been a pleasure working with the students, as they study and create poetry.
Wired for Poetry
Poetry is an art form—that started a long time ago. It is still an elder among the creative arts. We can also say that the essentials of poetry overlap significantly with the basic ways the human brain learns. According to our modern and blossoming neurobiological understandings, the human brain is a natural poetry machine. I can’t help but recall the time my three-year-old nephew held up high a peeled banana at breakfast and exclaimed, “Look, the moon.”
In July 2005, after Bay School’s first academic year, faculty members attended a conference called “Teaching to the Teenage Brain.” Ever since, notes from that week have informed my work with students. According to the conference leader, Gesner Geyer, an enriched learning environment matches teaching practice to the nature of how the brain learns. Recently, I have come to understand how well humans are wired for poetry. Geyer’s summary of recent scientific knowledge proposes that, fundamentally, the brain learns in six ways:
By associating (linking, connecting) new information to existing knowledge
By shaping those associations into patterns
By making meaning (e.g., from these patterns)
through emotions (that work as relevance detectors)
through the body
mostly beneath the level of awareness
As just one example of alignment between poetry and the brain, consider metaphor, a basic building block of poetry. Through metaphor, we associate something unknown, unfamiliar or puzzling (like love or separation) with something our brain knows (like the scent of a rose or the stacked stones of a wall). This year’s sections of the Poetry course focused on three essentials: sound, imagery and metaphor. Through both reading and writing poems, students regularly circled back to each element in order to build an understanding of its special potential. They read poems from the ancient Near East and Far East, from medieval Europe and from the modern Americas. They wrote in meter and free verse. They analyzed published poems and reflected on their own original compositions. Each student was responsible for leading a class on a poet of his or her choosing. In these sessions, classmates learned about subjects such as World War Two’s effect on Tadeusz Rozewicz (Poland), modern industrialization’s impact on Wordsworth’s Lyrical Ballads (England) and the playful criticism of Billy Collins (United States). As a final project, both sections of the course produced a book for the school’s library. These books contain separate chapters from each student. The first half of each chapter contains two published poems and that student’s analysis of how these two poems “talk” to each other. In the chapter’s second half, each student includes an original poem, as well as an essay explaining plans, discoveries and final reflections from the process. The samples in this newsletter come from the class presentations and the book chapters. As always, it has been a pleasure working with the students, as they study and create poetry.
Becoming Our Brain: New Web Browser Unleashed
Earlier this week I mailed this letter to The New York Times. Now it can safely appear here.
To the Editor:
Re: “Web Browsing Takes Social Turn” by Miguel Helft (news article, Nov.8)
To paraphrase a main idea in Nicholas Carr’s book, The Shallows (Norton, 2010), the internet is increasingly doing our thinking for us. This momentum is causing important parts of our brain to atrophy. For example, we learn largely through our capacity to associate new information with prior knowledge. If you ever wondered “what the internet is doing to our brains” (Carr’s subtitle), look no further than Miguel Helft’s article about the new web browser being launched today. RockMelt not only searches the web for you, “but also fetches the pages associated with these results, so a user can preview those pages quickly and decide which to click to.” Beautiful—now the internet browser makes associations for you. You don’t have to exercise that part of your brain anymore. You, the “user,” are now being used, while becoming less able to think for yourself.
To the Editor:
Re: “Web Browsing Takes Social Turn” by Miguel Helft (news article, Nov.8)
To paraphrase a main idea in Nicholas Carr’s book, The Shallows (Norton, 2010), the internet is increasingly doing our thinking for us. This momentum is causing important parts of our brain to atrophy. For example, we learn largely through our capacity to associate new information with prior knowledge. If you ever wondered “what the internet is doing to our brains” (Carr’s subtitle), look no further than Miguel Helft’s article about the new web browser being launched today. RockMelt not only searches the web for you, “but also fetches the pages associated with these results, so a user can preview those pages quickly and decide which to click to.” Beautiful—now the internet browser makes associations for you. You don’t have to exercise that part of your brain anymore. You, the “user,” are now being used, while becoming less able to think for yourself.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
