Tag: Mind

Education and the Human Mind

On By robstroudIn C.S. Lewis, Education, Modern Life, My Writing Projects, Roman History17 Comments

Learning is fun. Education can be enjoyable too. But obviously, they are not the same. 

C.S. Lewis wrote a great deal about learning. A master of metaphors, he brilliantly described two distinct challenges faced by educators. In The Abolition of Man, he stated “the task of the modern educator is not to cut down jungles but to irrigate deserts.” 

Wheaton professor, Robert McKenzie, offers a concise explanation of Lewis’ keen observation.

‘Cutting down jungles,’ as I understand that phrase, means helping students with passionate convictions to evaluate critically their world views, to examine what lies beneath the personal beliefs they profess.

‘Irrigating deserts,’ conversely, involves nurturing in apathetic or cynical students the hope that there is meaning and purpose in human existence.

Quite true, and I believe Lewis’ insight is more timely today than it was during the past century.

Classical Versus Modern Education

Today I read a passage that reminded me just how dramatically contemporary curricula deviate from the traditional educational materials used before the modern era. 

While conducting research for a book about imperial Rome, which I hope to complete this year, I came upon the following passage. 

It would have been easy to swell this little volume to a very considerable bulk, by appending notes filled with quotations; but to a learned reader such notes are not necessary; for an unlearned reader they would have little interest; and the judgment passed both by the learned and by the unlearned on a work of the imagination will always depend much more on the general character and spirit of such a work than on minute details.

It appears in Lays of Ancient Rome by Thomas Babington Macaulay, which is available for free download at Internet Archive.

Macaulay (1834-59) was a prominent British historian and politician. His histories were thoroughly researched and widely respected, especially by those on the (liberal) Whig* end of the political spectrum.

A contemporary of Macaulay described his preparation for writing in poetic fashion. According to novelist William Makepeace Thackeray (1811-63), “he reads twenty books to write a sentence; he travels one hundred miles to make a line of description.”

It appears that, like C.S. Lewis, Macaulay possessed a lasting recollection of all he read. 

Returning to our beginning dichotomy – jungles versus deserts – both writers were a product of wide and critical literary study. Their minds were, in a sense, like a “rain forest.” Albeit, with C.S. Lewis it was certainly an orderly, well-tended forest. For some less stably grounded and more scatterbrained, the result is a jungle which requires radical clearing.

Alas, today’s more common problem, the unceasing pursuit of entertainment and distraction, leaves many with barren mental landscapes. In consequence, our calling as parents, educators, and friends, becomes one of irrigating the sparse flora and planting healthy new seeds in the hope that they will one day bloom.

* There is an interesting Mythlore article about C.S. Lewis’ view of history you can read here. In it, the author notes that “Lewis rejected a Whig history of unidirectional progress…” For a succinct article on the dangers of Whiggishness, I recommend “Evangelicals and Whig History” at First Things.

⁑ The brain truly can resemble a jungle, as a “digital reconstruction” reproduced on BrainFacts illustrates.

Immediately recognizable by its intricate folds and grooves, the cerebral cortex is the wrinkly, outer layer of the brain responsible for awareness, perception, and thought. Its interconnected neurons are arranged in six layers, a bit like the layers of tropical rainforests. . . . The findings may bring scientists closer to understanding how the complex jungle of cortical neurons interpret sensory information.

Using Your Entire Brain

On By robstroudIn C.S. Lewis, Nature, Potentially Useful Trivia, Theological Matters16 Comments

Brain1
Have you ever wondered just how much of your own brain you effectively use?

Unfortunately, the percentage of our brains harnessed for daily work remains a bit of a mystery, based upon unproven theories.

One thing is certain though—the frequently repeated notion that human beings only utilize 10% of their brains is nonsense. Despite the fact that this myth has never been supported by scientists, it has gained a proverbial life of its own.

Though an alluring idea, the “10 percent myth” is so wrong it is almost laughable, says neurologist Barry Gordon at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine . . .*

Another neurologist adds another interesting perspective.

Although it’s true that at any given moment all of the brain’s regions are not concurrently firing, brain researchers using imaging technology have shown that, like the body’s muscles, most are continually active over a 24-hour period. “Evidence would show over a day you use 100 percent of the brain,” says John Henley, a neurologist at the Mayo Clinic . . .

Which Half Runs the Show?

Assuming you use nearly all of the gray and white matter stuffed in your cranium, there is another question that begs an answer. Which hemisphere is dominant?

Medical scientists have identified numerous mental functions with particular regions of the brain. As the illustration above suggests, because of that the human mind relies on different hemispheres for different activities.

Most of us have already determined whether we are “right-brained” or “left-brained.” And, since we often know ourselves rather well, we’re probably correct in our assessment.

Still, there are some online tests capable of answering the question of just how well balanced we are in using whatever portion of our minds to which we have access. I recently took two of the assessment instruments and learned that I am a reasonably balanced individual.

You just may be more balanced than you think. Not that “balanced” is better than having one or the other side dominant. In fact, it feels a bit like being a “jack of all trades.”

Brain 2The first test—available for you to take here—gave me the wonderful news that my “right and left hemispheres seem to have reached a level of perfect harmony.”

It sounds almost like attaining Nirvana, if one believes in such things.

It was amazing what they were able to discern about my deepest being with twelve simple questions.

Brain 3

The second test—available here—gave me the following result. It reveals the mental equilibrium I have achieved with this informative graphic.

I really enjoyed the image (yellow is my second favorite color) . . . until I realized the uncolored portions of my brain suggested they were dormant. (I suspect the very fact that I’m concerned about the possibility implies it might be true.)

Lewis on the Human Mind

C.S. Lewis wrote about many aspects of human nature. That included, of course, the least understood organ, the brain. In the following passage from a 1921 letter, he describes the way our memories possess the power to transform the realities of the past.

I still feel that the real value of such a holiday is still to come, in the images and ideas which we have put down to mature in the cellarage [cellar or basement] of our brains, thence to come up with a continually improving bouquet.

Already the hills are getting higher, the grass greener, and the sea bluer than they really were; and thanks to the deceptive working of happy memory our poorest stopping places will become haunts of impossible pleasure and Epicurean repast.

The following argument is found in 1944’s “Is Theology Poetry?” His thoughts on how the human brain supports the existence of a Creator are well worth considering.

When I accept Theology I may find difficulties, at this point or that, in harmonising it with some particular truths which are imbedded in the mythical cosmology derived from science. But I can get in, or allow for, science as a whole. Granted that Reason is prior to matter and that the light of that primal Reason illuminates finite minds. I can understand how men should come, by observation and inference, to know a lot about the universe they live in.

If, on the other hand, I swallow the scientific cosmology as a whole, then not only can I not fit in Christianity, but I cannot even fit in science. If minds are wholly dependent on brains, and brains on bio-chemistry, and bio-chemistry (in the long run) on the meaningless flux of the atoms, I cannot understand how the thought of those minds should have any more significance than the sound of the wind in the trees.

And this is to me the final test.

This is how I distinguish dreaming and waking. When I am awake I can, in some degree, account for and study my dream. The dragon that pursued me last night can be fitted into my waking world. I know that there are such things as dreams: I know that I had eaten an indigestible dinner: I know that a man of my reading might be expected to dream of dragons. But while in the nightmare I could not have fitted in my waking experience. The waking world is judged more real because it can thus contain the dreaming world: the dreaming world is judged less real because it cannot contain the waking one.

For the same reason I am certain that in passing from the scientific point of view to the theological, I have passed from dream to waking. Christian theology can fit in science, art, morality, and the sub-Christian religious. The scientific point of view cannot fit in any of these things, not even science itself.

Even with my limited mind, which too often seems to run on only six of its eight cylinders, I recognize the wisdom of Lewis’ contrast between dreaming and waking. He is brilliant.

I imagine that our favorite Oxford dean’s online results might have looked something like this.

Lewis Brain

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* This quotation, and the one which follows it, come from Scientific American.

I have blogged in the past about the human brain. You might find one of the following posts interesting:

Engage Brain

Distant Fathers

Mensa & C.S. Lewis

Malapropistic Entertainment

Distant Fathers

On By robstroudIn Animals, C.S. Lewis, Family, Grandparenting, Marriage, Modern Life10 Comments

miceChildren don’t get to choose their parents. They aren’t able to select loving parents in contrast to abusers. They can’t  express any preference about being in a home with a mom and a dad committed to them, and to one another.

But the home into which children are born matters a great deal in the direction and shape of their entire life.

It doesn’t take a genius to acknowledge that some settings are healthier than others. The ideal context (which very few of us are blessed to experience) is a home where mom and dad keep their vows to one another, and devote themselves to placing their children in the forefront of their concerns.

Those of us who are people of faith recognize a third pillar to this structure. There is spousal love, parental love, and love of God. When you have all three, you are fortunate indeed.

Sadly, for many, one or both parents are absent. They may be physically present (as my own alcoholic father was) but they are disengaged . . . unconnected . . . absent. I believe that when they are physically present but not really there, they often teach their children worse lessons than they would have learned if they were literally gone. But that’s a conversation for another day.

A study some months ago reveals that the absence of fathers during childhood can actually affect the brain of the child. Yes, you read that right—it can physically affect their brains.

In the study Dr. Gobbi and her colleagues compared social activity and brain anatomy between the two groups . . . the first, raised with both parents, and the second,  that had been raised only by their mothers. The results showed that mice raised without a father demonstrated abnormal social interactions.

This group of subjects also showed more aggressive patterns of behavior in comparison with their counterparts raised with both parents. In addition, these effects were stronger for female offspring. Interestingly females raised without fathers also had a greater sensitivity to the stimulant drug–amphetamine.*

Before continuing, it’s important to note that these experiments were conducted on animals . . . mice, to be precise. While we don’t normally think of mice as paternalistic creatures, neuroscientists assure us that these results are significant.

“Although we used mice, the findings are extremely relevant to humans,” claims Dr. Gabriella Gobbi, a researcher of the Mental Illness and Addiction Axis at the RI-MUHC, senior author and an associate professor at the Faculty of Medicine at McGill University. “We used California mice which, like in some human populations, are monogamous and raise their offspring together.”

California mice? Monogamous? Who would have thought!

Whether you place much stock in this scientific research or not, most honest individuals acknowledge the significance our father and mother share in our early formation.

C.S. Lewis’ loss of his mother and the great distance between himself and his father greatly impacted the development of his personality. Lewis goes so far as to make this confession in Surprised by Joy: “With the cruelty of youth I allowed myself to be irritated by traits in my father which, in other elderly men, I have since regarded as lovable foibles.”

Elsewhere, Lewis writes longingly of the intimate relationship he longed to have had with his own father. Describing the source of author George MacDonald’s guiding inspiration in life, he writes:

An almost perfect relationship with his father was the earthly root of all his wisdom. From his own father, he said, he first learned that Fatherhood must be at the core of the universe. He was thus prepared in an unusual way to teach that religion in which the relation of Father and Son is of all relations the most central. (George MacDonald: An Anthology).

I did not have that sort of relationship with my own father. I strove to give it as a gift to my children though. And today, while I continue to be their dad, I am acutely aware of the kind of grandfather I am.

Whether it truly affects those developing minds or not, I am committed to caring for each of them as well as is humanly possible.

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* You can read the quoted article in The Neuropsychotherapist here. The abstract for the original research is available here.