Building a Brain

When I was a new mom, I was learning about neural networks and how memory and learning work in a biomechanical sense. Did you know that every time a newborn has an experience that ‘works’ –they get milk, they get to be close to mom, they get clean, they get sleep—their brains are building synapses? Those are links between neurons that will eventually make neural pathways.

One of the fun pieces of brain development science that has been discovered is that the more you do a thing, the faster and more automatically your brain will replicate the thing. It’s not just ‘training your arm’ to throw a ball, it’s training your brain to build strong neural pathways so ‘throwing a ball’ becomes a high-speed highway of connections that make throwing a ball an act completed without confusion, thought, decisions or concentration.

For newborns, this means that if snuggling this way, and suckling this way results in a warm, fully belly, they are likely to do it again. And tomorrow, they’ll do it again and again and again. Every success strengthens the pathway. So, while the first time they tried it, it was pleasant… and a neural path was ‘walked’ through the grey matter… it’s the fifth or seventieth ‘walk’ down the same pathway that has made it visible as a track.

Initially, the synaptic ‘walk’ might be confusing and hard to retrace (poor little confused baby trying to figure out how to latch on again at 3 days old) but every single success makes the pathway stronger. Stronger pathways make for more-skilled brains…

Practice doesn’t make perfect… but it does make brains more complex.

Are Children Valuable People? Who is Allowed to Waste Their Time?

Way back in the olden days, I took a series of tests. In fact, I was taken out of class regularly to do a lot of tests. For months. The tests were to find out if I should skip a grade. Isn't that the coolest, aren't I amazing? I was in 4th grade. The lowest placement on the tests was grade 8 math, because I didn't have any idea what algebra was. The average placement was university, second year. Clearly, skipping a grade was going to be pointless, to say the least.

Spin forward a lot of years... until quite recently, actually. When a person is thoroughly indoctrinated into some idea by true cultural cohesiveness surrounding it, sometimes it takes a really long time to see through it. Or, rather -- gee for someone supposedly smart, it took me a long time to twig to this...

I had essentially finished high school and first year university when I was 9, except I dipped the math.

Now, here's the funny part. Or, rather the part that I've only recently stopped gritting my teeth about: 

since it was pointless to move up a year, and it's completely acceptable to waste any child's time, I got to do the next 8 years anyhow

Nope, I haven't stopped gritting my teeth about that. It still makes me really, really mad.

Now, check your response to that: a 9-year-old challenged and passed the exams to complete first year university, what should that child do tomorrow? Oh, just finish the rest of grade 4. 

Perhaps upon consideration, that's a bit silly. 

But, what, then? 

Too young to go to university, obviously (is that really that obvious? Or is it just a really, really ordinary way of thinking about something we simply do not think about much?) 

Certainly can't just 'hang out' -- imagine the dangers to society, having unemployed children out wandering around after they've finished learning everything the schools hope to teach... yeah. Imagine. 

Can't work (there are laws about interfering with a child's...uh... education.... um.)

It is acceptable in our society to waste a child's life any way any authority happens to see fit, and this is the perfect example: 9 years old, already done everything (except math) that will be required for the next 8 or 9 years, and, well... who cares? 

It's not as if a child has anything valuable to do with her time.

It isn't like the child's life is valued.

This is the most pervasive form of de-humanizing discrimination in our society today.

Virtually no one will speak up against boring teachers, boring or outdated coursework, poor textbooks, unnecessarily repetitive tasks, waiting around for 6 years while the rest of the class fails to catch up, or spending 13 years floundering over their heads with material they may never understand... 

Because even if it is a total waste of time, so what?

Children aren't important enough to don't have anything important to do.

Imagine a doctor, who'd passed every test and licence exam, being required to continue taking the classes that were designed to help her pass the exams, for an additional 9 years, because she wasn't 37 yet. 

What does 37 have to do with it?

Exactly. 

What does 18 have to do with it? More to the point, what on earth does being 9 have to do with it?