School Days

The Classroom

Is the modern day classroom the right environment for our children to learn and thrive?

Are young males especially incompatible with the traditional classroom?

Where did the classroom come from, and was it selected for the correct reasons as the best setting for learning?

The Edison Gene

Author Thom Hartmann has written about what he believes is a genetic difference that exists among certain individuals due to its survival advantage for our primitive hunter ancestors. He refers to this in modern man as the Edison Gene, after Thomas Alva Edison. Hartmann writes:

When Edison’s schoolteacher threw him out of school in the third grade for being inattentive, fidgety, and "slow," his mother, Nancy Edison, the well—educated daughter of a Presbyterian minister, was deeply offended by the schoolmaster’s characterization of her son. As a result, she pulled him out of the school. She became his teacher from then until the day he went off on his own to work for the railroads (inventing, in his first months of employment, a railroad timing and signaling device that was used for nearly a century). She believed in him and wasn’t going to let the school thrash out of him his own belief in himself. As a result of that one mother’s efforts, the world is a very different place.

"Ah, but we mustn’t coddle these children!" some say. Consider this: Edison invented, at age sixteen, that device that revolutionized telegraph communication. It started him on a lifelong career of invention that led to the light bulb, the microphone, the motion picture, and the electrification of our cities. Would the world have been better off if he’d been disciplined into "behaving himself"?

The children and adults who carry this gene have and offer multiple gifts, both individually and as members of our society. Sometimes these gifts are unrecognized, misinterpreted, or even punished, and as a result, these exceptional children end up vilified, drugged, or shunted into Special Education. The result is that they often become reactive: sullen, angry, defiant, oppositional, and, in extreme cases, suicidal. Some Edison—gene adults face the same issues, carrying the wounds of school with them into adulthood, often finding themselves in jobs better adapted to stability than creativity.

What exactly defines those bearing this genetic makeup? Edison- gene children and adults are by nature:

Enthusiastic

Creative

Disorganized

Non—linear in their thinking (they leap to new conclusions or observations)

Innovative

Easily distracted (or, to put it differently, easily attracted to new stimuli)

Capable of extraordinary hyperfocus

Understanding of what it means to be an "outsider"

Determined

Eccentric

Easily bored

Impulsive

Entrepreneurial

Energetic

All of these qualities lead them to be natural:

Explorers

Inventors

Discoverers

Leaders .

Those carrying this gene, however, often find themselves in environments where they’re coerced, threatened, or shoehorned into a classroom or job that doesn’t fit. When aren’t recognized for their gifts but instead are told that they’re disordered, broken, or failures, a great emotional and spiritual wounding occurs. This wounding can bring about all sorts of problems for children, for the adults they grow into, and for our society.

I and many scientists, educators, physicians, and therapists believe that when these unique children don’t succeed in public schools, it’s often because of a disconnect between them—their brains are wired to make them brilliant inventors and entrepreneurs—and our schools, which are set up for children whose brains are wired to make them good workers in the structured environments of a factory or office cubicle.

Those children whom we call "normal" are more methodical, careful, and detail-oriented and are less likely to take risks. They often find it hard to keep it together and perform in the rapid-fire world of the Edison—gene child: They don’t do as well with video games, couldn’t handle working in an emergency room or on an ambulance crew, and seldom find themselves among the ranks of entrepreneurs, explorers, and salespeople. Similarly, Edison—gene children have their own strengths and limitations: They don`t do well in the school environment of repetition, auditory learning, and rote memorization that has been set up for "normal" kids, and they don’t make very good bookkeepers or managers. Genetically these kids are pioneers, explorers, and adventurers. They make great innovators, and they find high levels of success in any field where there’s a lot of change, constant challenge, and lots of activity. Such personalities are common among emergency room physicians, surgeons, fighter pilots, and salespeople.

There are many areas in which such people can excel—especially when they make it through childhood with their belief in themselves intact.

The Hunter Gene

Hartmann argues that ADHD, which has been demonstrated to be genetically transmitted to children from their parents or grandparents and is characterized by hyperactivity and the restive need for high stimulation, is not in fact a “psychiatric illness that should be treated with powerful, mind-altering, stimulant drugs,” but may well represent what were once in fact “useful skills for hunter—gatherer people.” It is he says, the contrast with the skill sets of the first agriculturalists “which have become those most favored in our schools and most workplaces,” that makes it seem dysfunctional today.

He notes that what is seen in the classroom as distractibility is in fact a constant scanning of the environment which would have been a major advantage for a primitive hunter. Alternatively, once the agricultural revolution changed societies from hunting to farming “this scanning turned into a liability.” Likewise, “to the prehistoric hunter impulsivity was an asset because it provided the ability to act on instant decisions, as well as the willingness to explore new untested areas.” Although the brain of the farmer would have “tolerated, or even enjoyed, sticking with something until it was finished… for a primitive hunter, risk and high stimulation were a necessary part of daily life.”

Where have all the hunters Gone?

Hartmann asks the following question:

If we accept for a moment the possibility that the gene that causes ADHD was useful in another time and place but has become a liability in our modern society based on the systems of agriculture and industry, then these questions arise: How did we reach a point in human evolution where the farmers so massively outnumber the hunters? If the hunter gene was useful for the survival of people, why have hunting societies largely died out around the world?

He answers by explaining that the efficiency of agriculture over hunting allows the same amount of land to support up to ten times the population. The result is that, over time, hunting societies are always replaced by farming societies. In addition, farming societies developed immunities to deadly diseases, which began among domesticated animals, while these diseases wiped out vulnerable populations of hunters, which had no such prior exposure and therefore no immunities.

Hunters in a Farmer's World

Hartmann reports on the content of a note he received from a physician who worked among Native Americans:

Many of these descendants of the Athabaskan Indians of Western Canada have never chosen to adapt to farming. They had no written language until an Anglo minister, fairly recently, wrote down their language for the first time. They talk "heart to heart,” and there is little "clutter" between you and them when you are communicating. They hear and consider everything you say. They are scanning all the time, both visually and auditorily. Time has no special meaning unless it is absolutely necessary (that’s something we Anglos have imposed on them). They don’t use small talk, but get right to the point, and have a deep understanding of people and the spiritual. And their history shows that they have a love of risk—taking.

Another physician reported:

I’ve worked among indigenous hunting societies in many parts of the world, from Asia to the Americas. Over and over again I see among their adults and children that constellation of behaviors we call ADD. In those societies, however, these behaviors are highly adaptive and actually contribute to the societies’ success.

Hartmann states:

Among the member of the tribes of northern Canada, such as the caribou hunters of the McKenzie Basin, these adaptive characteristics- constantly scanning their environment, quick decision-making (impulsivity), and a willingness to take risks—contribute every year to the tribe’s survival. These same behaviors, however, often make it difficult for tribal children to succeed in Western schools when we try to impose our Western curriculum on them.

Hartmann describes the conditions children who don’t “fit in” in a school environment that doesn’t tolerate their differences. The implication that these students may have “stunted” prefrontal lobes needs to be examined in light of recent science that shows the impact, and the psychological harm that occurs, when there is a “mismatch between the way they learn and the way some of our schools teach.”

Normal development in these children may be damaged by the highly critical environment they experience in a school setting that punishes and condemns these differences. Hartmann notes that: “Unlike the adult world, in school generally what is most valued is the ability to quickly memorize and instantly repeat things that may not even seem to have any value or context.”

School Days, School Days

If we think the classroom has always been the appropriate place of learning we need only recall the 1907 Lyrics of Will D. Cobb:

School days, school days

Dear old golden rule days

Readin' and 'ritin' and 'rithmetic

Taught to the tune of the hickory stick.