|School (Photo credit: The Library of Virginia)| "Currently, I
have a directed reading course on neuroplasticity & learning.
The change in an adolescent’s brain is immense, with large
portions of the executive function and the prefrontal cortex
maturing. There is also a significant proliferation in dendrites
& synapses that causes the adolescent cortex to thicken, before
it goes through 6 or so years of intense pruning. It’s vitally
important that our students be deeply engaged cognitively during
this period. The brain works on a use it or lose it principle.
So you can see why a boring environment having a more powerful
thinning effect on the brain cortex than an exciting or enriched
environment has on cortex thickening is a big deal. Boring
classroom environments might actually be harming our students
ability to think." Life in our mass institutions dumbs us all
down. We insist on trying to Increasing the low-level democracy
within our mass institutions is critical: families and kids need
far more control, a