One of the hot topics at the first annual Brain Expo held in San Diego from October 29th through November 1st, 1998, was the fact that the brains of current students are different than the brains of the students of say the 1950s and teaching techniques must change accordingly. Experiences early in life shape the wiring (axon to dendrite circuits) of the rapidly developing brain. Repeated experiences tend to develop specific capabilities such as language pronunciation. The absence of certain experiences tends to allow weakening or even disappearance of certain circuits that are not developed through use.

Consider the reality of how the environment of children has changed from 1950s to 1990s:
Now TV is often used as a babysitter. Children are bombarded with fast-changing visual images and emotionally laden (selling) messages. NOTE: In one case in Japan in 1997, rapidly changing visual images in a new TV cartoon show so confused the brains of young viewers that many experienced seizures. The show had to be immediately taken off the air. This compares with the more normally paced family and peer talk and play activities of the pre-TV era.

Family patterns have changed drastically. The 1960 census listed 4 patterns; the year 2000 census will list 20 or so family patterns. Some of the new patterns decrease family auditory exchanges.

Dietary and nutrition habits have changed. For example, bottle-fed babies often exhibit lower levels of the fatty acid component DHA, a component that is usually present in breast milk and is critical for early development of the brain. (See the article on brain nutrition in this issue.) Many foods and beverages commonly given to today's youngsters now contain hormones (fed to cattle) and stimulants (like caffeine in soda) that were not as prevalent in the 1950s.

With an increase in both parents working outside the home, more children are placed in group day care situations. These situations can present both advantages and disadvantages in relation to brain development depending on the training and expertise of care providers. For example, a day care center might promote early use of computers by very young children; unless done carefully this could actually aggravate the TV situation previously described. A computer is not another human being with whom you can learn to react with emotional skill or intelligence.

Jeffrey Freed and Laurie Parsons in the outstanding book, Right-Brained Children In A Left-Brained World, provide dramatic observations on the apparent results of the described changes in the environment of our children. The paperback edition of this 1998 book is now available from Fireside Publishers or through www.amazon.com. It is a book that every parent of a young child and every educator should read. A very simple summary of the observations in the book are that:

1. The new environment is leading to development of brains that are less verbally or linguistically oriented and much more visually oriented with shorter attention spans. This shows up in an actual worldwide internal shift in comprehensive IQ scores. While children achieve total IQ scores as strong as ever, the total scores are a result of lowered verbal and raised visual capability!
   
2. More and more of these right-brained (visually oriented) children are being classified as having attention deficit disorders in their classrooms because traditional teaching techniques were not designed for right-brained learners.

Freed and Parsons labeled this growing group of children pseudo-ADD students. Adults are sometimes applying a deficiency label to them even though they are not deficient at all; there is simply a mismatch between teaching or adult communication techniques and the way that the brains of these youngsters have been wired by their environment. The size of this group is growing toward the point where that group could become the normal group in our world of ever-increasing multi-media use. Most important, if parents and educators use the teaching techniques of the past with these youngsters, those techniques will not lead to achievement levels as good as those of the past. We owe these youngsters who are perfectly capable of strong learning achievement a more appropriate learning environment. After all, we are the ones who presented them with the environment that shaped their brains!

Some people look at the increasing focus on using brain research as a bandwagon that will pass. Dr. David Sousa, one of the great speakers at the Brain Expo put that attitude in perspective with this reply--You don't understand. It (use of brain research) IS the wagon! Put more strongly, schools that do not use research to increase use of brain-friendly teaching and learning techniques will be guilty of educational malfeasance.

While many books, workshops and conferences are now available to educators who want to accelerate their attention to brain research, some of the very general principles can be outlined as follows:

1. School staffs must carefully plan emotional connections - - an environment of safety, group belonging, and caring that can compete with the emotionally laden but more superficial world of multi-media messages.
2. Teachers must provide variety and give choices to allow learners to click-select their appropriate learning and assessment options. This can increase and not dilute the quality of learning. However, it is more work to offer two or more ways to learn or to demonstrate learning than to provide one way to youngsters who learn differently.
3. School curricula must be deliberately structured to teach everyone about rapidly expanding brain research, to provide more opportunities for verbal interaction and teaming, and to give learners as much information on promoting healthy brains as we give on promoting healthy bodies.

Professional development programs for business and industry trainers are about five years ahead of schools and colleges in promoting use of brain-friendly or accelerated learning techniques for different types of learners. The time has come for every school and teacher-training program and state board of education to join in making use of brain research information a major and dynamic priority. The research is now coming at us so fast that annual learning in this field is a must in order to be as effective at teaching as we can be.