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TheyThinkDifferentlyThey think differently…. When our former students from the 1970s democratic school gathered at reunions, I would hear them tell tales of their experiences at college and work. One of the things they said repeatedly was that they thought that their fellow college students or work peers didn’t think the way they did. They found it puzzling that others were so less resourceful when faced with challenges in their classes or work. Why? I thought. Is that really true? Do they think differently than others who have gone to traditional schools? I didn’t know why that could be true. It was a puzzle. Then in the 1990s when I discovered Sudbury Valley School and read many of the books they’ve published about the school and their educational model, I remember thinking, they’re saying the same thing as the kids I knew in the 70s: people who have attended Sudbury for a length of time to be memorable think differently. Wow! But why? It’s a puzzle! But wait a minute, the latest brain research may provide an answer. Let me tell you about a study that has turned the neurosciences upside down. (Neuroscience is the study of the brain and nervous system.) The following is my simple version of an article by Marian Cleeves Diamond, PhD, “Response of the Brain to Enrichment" First, you need to know that the brain has many neurons which are sort of shaped like trees. Some brains have neurons with very few branches (dendrites) while others have neurons with many, many branches and branches off those branches. The more dendrites, the more the brain is capable of making connections. Thinking and learning is about making connections, the more the merrier. For many years the neuroscientists have believed that as we in the animal kingdom grow old our brains thin out; neurons and their dendrites die off and are not replaced. As a result of that thinning out process, we loose, they thought, our ability to think and learn as well as when we were younger. People use to say, “You can’t teach an old dog new tricks. One day one of the neuroscientists began an experiment with rats. Some rats in this experiment were kept in a clean cage with good food, the right temperature, no companions and that’s all. They labeled that environment an ‘impoverished environment’; though it was a safe and healthy environment, it was really boring. Others were kept in a clean cage with good food, the right temperature, eleven other rats for companions and lots and lots of things to play with which were changed regularly every two or three days. It was labeled an ‘enriched environment’; it was safe, healthy and really stimulating with lots of companions and lots of things to play with. And what do you know? At the end of the experiment, the rats in the impoverished environments lost or did not grow new neurons/dendrites/connections in their brains as expected, but the ones who had lived their lives in the enriched environment had brains whose neurons had not only not thinned out, but had gotten even thicker, in some experiments up to the age of what would be considered 90 years old in humans. The rats in the enriched environment were able to learn new tricks even as they grew old. They could perform tasks, like learning how to get to a treat in a maze, as well or better than the younger rats in the impoverished environment. “No!,” said the other neuroscientists. This can’t be true. So, the experiment was done over and over again to test the results and sure enough the rats in enriched environments kept their smarts and even got smarter. What the neuroscientists are now saying is that learning is about growing new dendrites and thus new connections in your brain. The richer the environment you live in, the more opportunities to experience new challenges, the more likely you are to grow lots and lots of dendrites and make new connections in your brain. Even by yourself, with few things to play with, humans have the ability to be curious and curiosity is like making your own ‘enriched environment’ within your brain. Now ask yourself: Which school environment is like the impoverished environment, which the enriched environment? Say you come to school and you’re supposed to sit in your seat for hours at a time without moving around. You’re not supposed to talk to your neighbors in class and only to the teacher when you raise your hand and the teacher calls on you. You’re supposed to pay attention to what someone else is telling you to pay attention to and not think your own thoughts. You can’t change what you’re doing to something else more interesting. This happens all day, every day. BORING! Then you get off the bus at another school. You can do all kinds of things. You choose. You look for the challenges. There’s lots of resources, lots of people, people of all ages to talk to, to interact with. Some people you can learn things from, some you can teach. You can talk all day, if you can find people willing to listen and talk to you. If you need to move and stretch your muscles you can do that too, whenever you want. You learn how to negotiate to get what you need and want. You learn when you bump into other people’s rights. You can follow your own curiosity. You can learn what makes you happy to learn. You can do something over and over till you’ve learned it and then stop when it’s soooo boring. You can do all that every day, all day long and rest when you’re tired. Now which environment is going to grow the most dendrites? Remember now, more dendrites, more connections in the brain, means better thinking going on, a greater ability for deep learning and more complex thinking. So, what do you think? Do kids who attend democratic schools grow up to be different kinds of thinkers? Better thinkers? I think so. Laura Stine |