received multiple awards during his long career as a master
communicator of the implications of brain science research
for education and learning. His most recent book is The
Adolescent Brain: Reaching for Autonomy (Corwin Press,
2007). He is an Emeritus Professor of Education at the
University of Oregon.
I am honored to interview him today.
Alvaro Fernandez (AF): You recently published a book titled
The Adolescent Brain: Reaching for Autonomy. What advice
would you give to parents and educators of adolescents?
Robert Sylwester (RS): Biological phenomena always operate
within ranges. For example, leaves fall from trees in the
autumn, but typically not all at once. Developmental
changes similarly do not occur at the same time and at the
same rate in all child and adolescent brains. And just as
it's possible for wind or temperature to alter the time
when a leaf might fall, unexpected events can alter the
time when an adolescent has to confront and respond to
given environmental challenges.
The important thing for adults to do is to carefully
observe an adolescent's interests and abilities, and insert
challenges that move maturation forward at a reasonable
level. If you push too fast, you end up with a stressed out
adolescent. If you do not challenge sufficiently, you end
up with a bored adolescent. No magic formula exists for
getting this just right. This means, for example, that we
celebrate the skills of artists and athletes who function
beyond typical human capacity, and we create judicial
sanctions for those whose behavior does not reach
culturally acceptable levels. Most human behavior is
personally chosen and executed within wide ranges. We can
easily observe this wide range in such phenomena as
political discourse and religious belief or practice.
Adolescents strive towards autonomous adulthood as they
gradually discover their interests and capabilities, and
what is biologically possible and culturally appropriate.
They adapt their life to wherever they're most comfortable
within the marvelous sets of possible and appropriate
ranges that exist.
Adolescents take risks, no doubt about that. If you want to
eventually function within any range, you have to locate
its outer positive and negative limits. Speed limits and
other regulations provide direction, but adolescents (and
adults) still tend to move towards the limits - and maybe
just a smidgen beyond.
In short, parents and educators need to pay attention to
observe where adolescent's interests and abilities lie, and
engage them with experiences that will enable them to move
forward.
Alvaro Fernandez (AF): I find that, in an emerging field
like cognitive science, we need to start by clarifying the
language we use. Can you define some words such as
Learning, Education, Brain Development and Cognition.
Robert Sylwester (RS): Sure.
LEARNING: Most organisms begin life with most or all of the
processing systems and information that they need to
survive. Humans are a notable exception in that an
adult-size brain is significantly larger than a mother's
birth canal, so we're born with an immature one pound brain
that develops additional mass and capabilities during its
20 year post-birth developmental trajectory. Parenting,
mentoring, teaching, and mass media are examples of the
cultural systems that humans have developed to help young
people master the knowledge and skills they need to survive
and thrive in complex environments. Learning is one the
main activities we do, even if we often are not aware of it.
EDUCATION: Education, like the culture it subsumes, is a
conservative phenomenon. Science and technology move
rapidly, but education doesn't. So if schools often
resemble the schools of 50 years ago, that should not be
surprising. Parents remember their school experiences, and
since they survived them, they are typically leery about
educators experimenting with their children. This explains
in part why schools have not incorporated many of the
recent developments in neuroscience and cognitive
psychology.
BRAIN DEVELOPMENT: Childhood brain development is focused
on systems that allow children to recognize and remember
the dynamics of environmental challenges - challenges that
protective adults will solve for them. Adolescent brain
development is more focused on frontal lobe development,
the systems that allow us to respond appropriately and
autonomously to the challenges we confront.
COGNITION: Every experience will alter our brain's
organization at some level, so our brain's processing
networks continually change throughout our life. This
process is called brain plasticity. For example, since my
brain has adapted to my switch from a typewriter to a
computer, it would now be difficult (but not impossible)
for me to write again on a typewriter. Now, cognition is
linked to other concepts: emotion is the processing system
that tells us how important something is; attention focuses
us on the important and away from the unimportant things;
problem-solving determines how to respond, partly on the
basis of our memory of prior related experiences; and
behavior carries out the decision. The general term
cognition encompasses these various processes.
AF: Prof. Sylwester, thank you for your great information
and advice.
RS: My pleasure.
About the Author:
Alvaro Fernandez is the CEO and Co-Founder of
SharpBrains.
information for Brain Training and Brain Teasers.
SharpBrains has been recognized by Scientific American
Mind, MarketWatch, Forbes. Alvaro holds MA in Education and
MBA from Stanford University, and teaches The Science of
Brain Health at UC-Berkeley Lifelong Learning Institute.
You can learn more at http://www.sharpbra
