Why Do I Need a Teacher When I’ve Got Google

especially in terms of working memory (Schweitzer, et al), rapid shifting (Cedpeda, et al) and effortful processing (Tannock, et al). One of the more unusual findings is that kids with ADHD who looked in the mirror while working had better executive functioning, suggesting that it enhances emotional regulation. Cognitive rehabilitation studies by Mateer, Kearns, Selmud-Clikeman and others show that attention training is beneficial for children with attentional difficulties. Also, deep rest has been shown to heal the nervous system of stress, in part by lowering cortisol levels. Certain meditation techniques have been documented to improve emotional regulation and sleep, and reduce blood pressure as effectively as medication. Meditationtechniques have also been shown to increase one’s ability to focus attention.
    ( www.strugglingteens.com/news/executivefunctioning.html )
    We have had the capacity to teach thinking skills – to educate the prefrontal cortex and develop executive functioning in our children – for a long time now. Are you teaching your children
how
to think as well as
what
to think?

Chapter 13
Don’t make ’em mad, make ’em think?
    Pick up most brain books and you will find the authors waxing lyrical over the way our brain works, some even arguing that its wonderful design must be the hand of some Divine Creator at work (although the more I have learned about how weird the universe really is, for example how it may have gone from microscopic to astronomical in the blink of an eye according to Inflation Theory, the more I think Intelligent Design makes sense as the least weird option).
Accidental Mind: How Brain Evolution Has Given Us Love, Memory, Dreams, and God
by David J. Linden, professor of neuroscience at the Johns Hopkins University in the US, suggests otherwise. He picks up the triune brain theory research of Paul Maclean, which shows that we don’t just have one brain, we have three brains; the oldest is the reptilian brain, 1 the next one to evolve being the limbic system or the mammalian brain and then the ‘newest’ part of our brain, the bit that makes us human, the neo-cortex. According to Linden the first two parts are essentially a lizard brain ‘with some extra stuff thrown on top’ to make a mouse brain, with the grand three-part total being no more than ‘a mouse brain with extra toppings’ (Linden 2008). 2
    So much for the ‘most powerful computer in the universe’! In fact, in Linden’s words, the brain is quite categorically
not
‘an optimized, generic problem-solving machine, but rather a weird agglomeration of ad hoc solutions that have accumulated throughout millions of years of evolutionary history’ (which we will see in chapter 19 is also the process by which we have the education system we do today).
    Yet, this ‘cobbled together mess’ somehow gives us poetry, the fiscal system and the Eurovision Song Contest.
    What is interesting to note is the way in which our oh-so-clever neo-cortex is still at the mercy of our basic and millions-of-years-old reptilian brain, whether we like it or not. It’s the reason we all watch
Dr Who
from behind the sofa. Understanding this can help us in the classroom when dealing with inappropriate behaviour, can inform our responses to thesebehaviours and shows that, quite often, our responses make the situation so much worse anyway.
    But let’s start in Mexico and the watching of lizards. Neuroscientist Paul D. Maclean is the man behind this widespread ‘triune brain theory’ (which like much in brain research has since been superseded by a more complex model of our evolution, one that now allows us to explain intelligent octopuses and the ability of an African Grey parrot named Alex to name 50 different objects). Maclean drew on the research of a visionary 1930s naturalist, Llewellyn T. Evans, who had spent a great deal of time watching and recording the behaviours of 22 lizards on the wall of a cemetery near the village of Acapancingo in Mexico.
    In his seminal book
The Triune Brain in Evolution: Role in Paleocerebral Functions
, Maclean notes that:
    One of the surprising results of studying a variety of terrestrial animals is to discover how relatively few kinds of behavior one can identify in each and how most of these are common to all.
    (Maclean 1990)
    He identifies a neat list of just 25 lizard behaviours including acts such as ‘establishment of territory’, ‘hunting’, ‘hoarding’, ‘mating’,