“The fact is that given the challenges we face, education doesn't need to be reformed -- it needs to be transformed. The key to this transformation is not to standardize education, but to personalize it, to build achievement on discovering the individual talents of each child, to put students in an environment where they want to learn and where they can naturally discover their true passions.” Last Saturday was the official opening of the Sunshine Coast Council’s Green Art Strategy: TreeLine project. Students from Caloundra City Private School starred in this exhibit with a beautifully, visceral movie of a digital world of trees, which is now showing at the Caloundra Regional Art Gallery. Students from Years 7 to 10 used both artistic talent and technology skills under the guidance and mentoring of Judy Barrass. The students collaborated together with Judy to produce a forty minute visual display celebrating ‘trees’. The digital display of trees is both stunning and creative in its design; where onlookers are drawn into another world of colour and impossibly beautiful trees.
Guests were very impressed by the high quality of the students’ art work and the exhibit highlighted to me, once again, how such events provide both extension and opportunity for creativity in exploring new ideas for our talented students. The benefits of such imaginative work were obvious to one and all who attended the art exhibit.
Researchers into the benefits of visual arts, Ms Winner and Ms Hetland, co-authors of “Studio Thinking: The Real Benefits of Visual Arts Education” (Teachers College Press) found that:
“Students who study the arts seriously are taught to see better, to envision, to persist, to be playful and learn from mistakes, to make critical judgments and justify such judgments.”
During the exhibit I talked to one of the Sunshine Coast Council (SCC) organisers of the TreeLine event, who shared the story of how a SCC program for dance students many years ago, led to one of the students taking up full time ballet dancing and she now dances with a dance company in San Francisco. Her mother was visiting the Butter Factory recently and upon seeing this man called in to let him know how well her daughter was doing. She said that the very impetus for her daughter’s success came from that one opportunity given to her in the dance workshop at the Butter Factory many years ago. Isn’t it true, that one never knows where an opportunity like this will lead in life?
Sir Ken Robinson encourages us all to discover what potential lies within us; to find ourselves in the element and to awaken within ourselves, the endless possibilities of life. He shares many anecdotes of how famous people of our time prove that age and occupation is no barrier to finding our path. In his book, “The Element”, Robinson advocates the need to enhance creativity and innovation by thinking differently about human resources and imagination. As Robinson notes:
“Imagination is the source of every form of human achievement.”
Last Friday, I was fortunate enough to be invited to a lunch with University of Queensland’s, Professor Pankaj Sah, who is one of the leading researchers on brain synaptic plasticity at the Queensland Brain Institute (QBI). This newly founded institute brings together leading researchers in the field of neuroscience.
According to QBI, neuroscience is entering an era of accelerated discovery driven by the application of new molecular, genetic and imaging technologies, which will provide a deeper understanding of the regulation and function of the nervous system. Discoveries will also provide, for the first time, a real opportunity to develop new therapeutics to treat mental and neurological diseases, which account for a staggering 45 per cent of the disease burden in Australia.
Professor Sah’s main research is around the amygdala, which is critically involved in assigning emotional significance or value to events through associative learning. In particular, it is involved in the processing of fear producing stimuli.
Professor Sah told the story of a young person (HM), who was involved in a terrible accident which brought on severe seizures. The doctors at the time decided that the only way to stop the seizures was to operate, to do a lobotomy and remove the hippocampus. The operation was deemed successful, the seizures stopped but what the doctors discovered was that HM had no short term memory. HM could have a conversation with a doctor about what happened years ago before his accident but could not recall a conversation from ten minutes ago.
What neurologists have discovered from this case is that memory is stored in different parts of the brain and that there is no one single place where the brain stores all memories. The removal of the hippocampus highlighted the importance of this organ to the distribution of memories to the different parts of the brain.
One of the key findings from other research on synaptic plasticity centres around the concept that ‘cells that fire together wire together’. Professor Sah explained how a strong emotional impact causes us to recall incredible details; it is stored faster and laid down in memory faster than day to day conversations. Put in simple terms, the more senses and the stronger the emotional impact of the information or event involved in the active learning of concepts or skills, the greater likelihood that memories will stored in different parts of the brain, and recalled and understood much faster than learning in isolation.
Much of Sah’s research centres around the application of this research into improved learning - the best way, the best time and best places to learn. Researchers are hoping to find definitive answers to these questions in the near future.
John Hunt’s book, “The Art of the Idea” touched on the importance of ‘big leaps of faith’ and the work of QBI will certainly put Queensland at the forefront of understanding the brain and the learning process. Hunt points out that ‘incremental change is fine if you’re a glacier’, but what is sometimes needed is a new way of thinking and new ideas require momentum:
“It’s important to understand that ideas have trajectories and they move to the expectancy level you put around them. Therefore, it’s critical to aim high. No matter the context, an idea needs a decent arc. It needs to leap out of the present sameness and clearly carry everyone who’s following it to the other side.”
Maybe there is a lesson here for all of us: everything is interconnected, particularly in the brain. Let’s not limit our thinking, our ideas, our learning and our possible futures by the status quo. Sometimes an emotional leap of faith is required to move forward.
Karon Graham
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