This morning I was snowed in, like most people on the North Shore, and felt cold and hungry. This is the first Sunday of the New Year and I was thinking of scrambled eggs for breakfast. Before doing that, I started my usual morning routine of having a cup of lemon tea and logging in to my computer. With the scrambled eggs on my mind, I was intrigued by the suggestion of scrambling the cognitive egg as described in the most emailed article in the NY Times, How to Train the Aging Brain, and want to share some of it with you.
In the article at http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/03/education/edlife/03adult-t.html?hp , the author says that, for “brains in middle age, which, with increased life spans, now stretches from the 40s to late 60s”,
The trick is finding ways to keep brain connections in good condition and to grow more of them.
“The brain is plastic and continues to change, not in getting bigger but allowing for greater complexity and deeper understanding,” says Kathleen Taylor, a professor at St. Mary’s College of California, who has studied ways to teach adults effectively. “As adults we may not always learn quite as fast, but we are set up for this next developmental step.”
Educators say that, for adults, one way to nudge neurons in the right direction is to challenge the very assumptions they have worked so hard to accumulate while young. With a brain already full of well-connected pathways, adult learners should “jiggle their synapses a bit” by confronting thoughts that are contrary to their own, says Dr. Taylor, who is 66.
Teaching new facts should not be the focus of adult education, she says. Instead, continued brain development and a richer form of learning may require that you “bump up against people and ideas” that are different. In a history class, that might mean reading multiple viewpoints, and then prying open brain networks by reflecting on how what was learned has changed your view of the world.
“There’s a place for information,” Dr. Taylor says. “We need to know stuff. But we need to move beyond that and challenge our perception of the world. If you always hang around with those you agree with and read things that agree with what you already know, you’re not going to wrestle with your established brain connections.”
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Such new discovery, Dr. Mezirow says, is the “essential thing in adult learning.”
“As adults we have all those brain pathways built up, and we need to look at our insights critically,” he says. “This is the best way for adults to learn. And if we do it, we can remain sharp.”
And so I wonder, was my cognitive egg scrambled by reading that book on Thomas Jefferson? Did I, by exploring the flaws in a man I admire, create a suitably disorienting dilemma? Have I, as a result, shaken up and fed a brain cell or two?
In Panda Land, we have several adults who have put a lot of effort into learning Mandarin Chinese over the past year. Relating to their experience, I am trying to apply the suggestion and the method from this article to the situation of adults learning Mandarin Chinese.
If this article makes sense to you, let me ask you a few questions. Since Chinese language and culture are so different from those of the West, their different perception of the world can certainly provide you a challenge: Could you scramble your cognitive egg by learning Mandarin Chinese, as the article suggested learning a foreign language? Could you create a suitably disorienting dilemma by immersing yourself in the language and culture? Could you shake up and feed your brain a cell or two at a time by learning Chinese characters one by one?
I hope this will make some sense to you or at least get you thinking in the New Year. Well, I am going to make scrambled eggs for my breakfast and I like to scramble them using olive oil with lots of vegetables—onions, green and red bell peppers, tomatoes and Herbes de Provence. As a Chinese, I need to pay attention to the color, smell, and taste of the dish.
Whether you like scrambled eggs or not, let’s wish everyone in Panda Land:
A Happy and Healthy New Year! 新年快乐!
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