A New Old Approach

It is amazing what happens when you bribe children. Ok, I know that sounds terrible, but today, I needed a new game plan for my first graders - and I went back to the ol' positive and negative reinforcement techniques. Getting absolutely steam rolled last week (see last week's blog picture) by their energy, I knew that should I ever want to harness them long enough to get a sentence of instruction in, I would need some kind of leverage.  So I purchased a bag of Starburst fruit chews and decided to lay down the law with the trusty ol' "name on the board for misbehavior" threat. I couldn't believe how fast it worked. My strategy worked so well that zero names went on the board - and for the entire hour, I had probably a 95% increase in total attention span length. Sure, kids still went on the occasional energy binge - falling off chairs, climbing on the table, paper airplanes, selective hearing and general unrest - but for the most part, they listened, they participated and they walked out of the classroom today with a treat for good behavior. Fascinating that this technique still works so well!

My only mistake was that I left the scissors within reach. No, nobody was stabbed or attacked, but for whatever reason, when these kids see scissors, something inside of them nudges them to use them - constantly. They were to draw a picture in the first part of my lesson. Randomly, the kid next to me grabs a pair of scissors and cuts out his drawing. I continued teaching, commenting how he didn't need to cut his picture out... Next thing I know, half of the first graders are using scissors!  Paper scraps were everywhere. Ah, their inattentive tendencies managed to escape through their hands!  Needless to say, I will be hiding all scissors next time. Oh, I know, they will just find something else to distract themselves, but hopefully whatever it is will leave less of an aftermath for me to pick up.

I wonder what life would be like if we adults still behaved this way? The more I think about it, perhaps we still do. Instead of our name on the board, we get a ticket, jail time, "the look" from our spouses and instead of Starbursts we receive a bonus or a raise or some ice cream for dessert. And instead of scissors, well - we grab a keyboard or a cell phone, leaving brain cells all over the place.  How's that saying go? "The more things change, the more they stay the same."  Pretty much sums it up, doesn't it?

So, if that's all true, and we're just older versions of our young squirrelly selves - why don't you stop what you're doing, pick up a piece of paper, and draw and color yourself a picture - trust me, it'll make your day! 

This is Your Brain on Facebook

Pictured at right is a room full of extremely energetic, inattentive and adorable first graders with whom I have the pleasure of “teaching” every Wednesday afternoon. These kids are amped up – released from the control of a school classroom, they come over to the church across the street, where they get Pastor Keith to teach them about Jesus and the Bible for an hour. I do not make for a very productive first grade teacher. Most of my hour is spent trying to get them to sit for longer than ten seconds – make that three. I thought getting them into the sanctuary or the fellowship hall would help, but all I’ve done is give them more space to run, squirm and bounce around like spastic superballs shot out of a machine gun. In a word: chaos. They are always moving and have the attention span of squirrels on crack-cocaine. I have lots of love for these little ones, but I will need a much improved game-plan from here on out if I expect to keep my head from spinning off my neck.

As intriguing as these tiny terrors have been, I have decided to offer you some interesting parallels between these first grade pupils and what is happening to our brains, perhaps even at this very moment, as we utilize the ‘Interweb.’ After deciding to trade ignorance for enlightenment, I took on the intellectual and thoughtful reading of The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains, by Nicholas Carr.  Maybe you’ve also noticed changes in your mental capacities and practices, or maybe you’ve never given it a second thought, but this subject has become somewhat of a fascination of late, especially as I’ve become immersed in prenatal reading materials discussing how our bodies and brains develop. 

“Whether I’m online or not, my mind now expects to take in information the way the Net distributes it: in a swiftly moving stream of particles. Once I was a scuba diver in the sea of words. Now I zip along the surface like a guy on a Jet Ski.” (The Shallows, page 7)

I think most of us find ourselves on Jet Skis too. For all of the benefits of the web, and don’t get me wrong, there are many, this book has opened to me some startling consequences of our consumption of the Internet’s instant information and stimulation.  Perhaps the most negative affect of our incessant web use is the overall loss of sustained concentration we suffer. Like energetic and inattentive first graders, our brains are constantly distracted, not able to idle for longer than a few seconds before we crave additional stimulation.  Whether you’re on Facebook or Google, we are actually encouraging our brains to succumb to A.D.D.  “Our goal,’ says Irene Au (of Google), ‘is to get users in and out really quickly’…In other words, as author Nicholas Carr puts it, “Google is, quite literally, in the business of distraction.” (Page 157)

So what?  What’s the big deal?  I love the ease of Google. I love being able to find just about any answer by typing in a few key words and clicking “Search.” I still can’t believe most of my childhood homework assignments required use of the card catalog. But despite the awesomeness of the internet, I realize there is probably a significant part of me that has been numbed or eroded. “When we go online, we enter an environment that promotes cursory reading, hurried and distracted thinking, and superficial learning. It’s possible to think deeply while surfing the Net, just as it’s possible to think shallowly while reading a book, but that’s not the type of thinking the technology encourages and rewards.” (pg. 116)  Then it dawned on me: do I really want to become a shallow minded thinker? Do I want to lose my ability to ponder and imagine, contemplate and create?

“The constant shifting of our attention when we’re online may make our brains more nimble when it comes to multitasking, but improving our ability to multitask actually hampers our ability to think deeply and creatively.” (pg. 140) So, again, with the positives come the negatives. This constant desire to be connected every where, all the time, can be extremely helpful. On the other hand, ‘To be everywhere is to be nowhere.’ (Seneca, ancient Roman philosopher) I know I’m not the first person to make that conclusion - we've all been victims of either our own inattentiveness or others' while multitasking, but the desire for connectedness through our technology and web applications may in fact be leading to the opposite result:

“The great danger we face as we become more intimately involved with our computers—as we come to experience more of our lives through the disembodied symbols flickering across our screens—is that we’ll begin to lose our humanness, to sacrifice the very qualities that separate us from machines.” (pgs. 207-08)

I could go on and on. The book was really, really interesting. It devotes a chapter on how we formulate memories which had me hooked – it was like a Harry Potter novel, I couldn’t put it down. Did you know that “the normal human brain never reaches a point at which experiences can no longer be committed to memory?” The bottom line is that I want you to at least be aware that time spent online is rewiring your brain, and in not all good ways. I know that sounds dramatic and dreary, but it’s true. For me, staying sharp and having the ability to concentrate, contemplate and be creative is core to who I am as a person, so knowing and understanding a bit more of what happens to my neural circuits and synapses when I make multiple fantasy baseball transactions or check my email every hour is crucial to my future and overall well-being.  The same holds true for those of you online right now, reading this blog post – beware, be disciplined and be “attentive to what we stand to lose. How sad it would be, particularly when it comes to the nurturing of our children’s minds, if we were to accept without question the idea that ‘human elements’ are outmoded and dispensable.” (Pg. 224)

Obviously scaling back our internet use cold turkey is difficult, if not impossible in a culture such as ours. But, we do have choices and we can all make adjustments, and hey, you’re always welcome to join me in the Non-Facebook Club! Finally, if retaining depth and creativity is of importance to you, make sure you get outside for a nature hike now and then or better yet, go spend some time being in-tents!