Brain Science seems to be one of the big things in education these days; and a finding that’s had a lot of airtime is that teenagers have poor impulse control for biological reasons (try a google search for impulse control frontal cortex teenage). I find nothing objectionable in that, but I can’t help but notice that this is hardly news. Two and a half thousand years ago Plato said that youth lives along day by day, gratifying the desire that occurs to him and even then, I can picture his mother rolling her eyes and asking him to tell her something she did not already know.
What’s worrying, though, is not that science is now confirming what may seem obvious (obvious things aren’t aways true – investigating is the right thing). What’s worrying is that media reporting of science seems to blind many to details and context, and actually does the opposite of what science should do- encourage deeper and better thinking, raise better questions. So when the science is reported as telling us that teens can’t control impulses and make rapid, smart decisions like adults can (source), the report makes massive, incorrect generalisations about teenagers and adults. We all know teenagers whose impulse control is a great deal stronger than many adults, so accepting the opposite is just silly. The truth, as always, is far more nuanced. And the truth is really important – because we know that we need to help students see the big picture, and regardless of where they are on the self-control continuum, to develop in positive ways and to avoid biological, social or indeed any other excuses.
So how do we address this issue without talking nonsense? Blogger Tim Urban, whose graphics I have used here, writes really interestingly on this. He talks about students, and people in general, having four stages or steps (we’ll only look at the first two here) of understanding.
Urban talks about Step 1 as living the fog of everyday life, where we tend to reside if we let ourselves. In this world, we are so wrapped up in ourselves that we can see little else (hence the dense fog in the graphic). On this step the consequences of our actions seem distant and perhaps unimportant. For teenagers, this is entirely consistent with the brain findings I mentioned earlier – but it’s such a richer metaphor, because rather than focus on biological development about which we can do precious little, it automatically leads us to ask how can we disperse the fog, or at least thin it out, at least part of the time? That’s the business of growing up; families and education play a big role.
And that takes up to Urban’s Step 2 – where we learn to see through the fog (hence the less dense fog in the graphic), so it doesn’t prevent us from seeing issues in the longer term. This has to be aim of education for so many reasons because the short-term is rarely a guide to anything important. You might regard Step 2 is a necessary step for growing up.
If we (children and adults) can see through the fog, then life becomes a lot better. We realise that how we are feeling today may not imply more than, well, how we are feeling today; that the low grade in a test is just part of the learning process; that the constantly rising tide will sometime fall; that the argument with friend will pass; that not making the sports team may open opportunities elsewhere; that no-one will remember the wrong note in the performance. And, bluntly, life goes on.
The benefit of being able to move to Step 2 and to accept a broader perspective appears in philosophy throughout the ages under a variety of other names – perhaps stoicism most obviously. It means we can rise above the initial joy or despair to see them as part of a broader picture. This is a staple of conversations with students.
The familiarity and ubiquity of the notion of a broader perspective suggests that there is wisdom in it. The familiar school elements of reason, emotion, intuition and faith are present; and it’s no accident that they are woven into our education more thoroughly and profoundly than is easy to convey here.
The fog of war is a familiar phrase; I am suggesting that it can be generalised to the fog of life; and once we realise that, we have gone some way to seeing through it more clearly, and from moving from Step 1 to Step 2. As the final cartoon here illustrates, the benefits may be substantial, at the extremes, even life-saving.
Reference
Urban, T (2016) Religion for the non-Religious (available here Wait but Why)
