The material in this lecture is adapted from Dr. Healy’s book, Failure to Connect: How Computers Affect Our Children‚s Minds and What We Can Do About It.
Thank you, Victoria, for the lovely introduction. Victoria has been an extraordinary help and mother hen for me, really, as we tried to make the arrangements for me to come to this wonderful congress in Paris. I cannot thank her enough. Even from Yemen where her e-mail was frequently not functioning, we managed very well and I am grateful to be here. Also, of course, thank you to Renilde Montessori and to Marie-Louise Pasquier, to the Committee for including me in what is a spectacular display of what education can be for the human being.
As I have been listening to inspiring lectures at this congress, the following thought has been most prevalent in my mind. If every educator and form of education in every country in the world could start with a core philosophy so deeply considered, and so carefully articulated, and then develop methods and procedures, including attitudes towards children and education, we would not be facing many problems we are now facing. Particularly in the United States, we find a great confusion about education, its aims and purpose. I must tell you that I am not a Montessorian, I have had no training in Montessori; it was barely mentioned in my schooling. Yet I find, given the people I always meet at Montessori conferences, such a communality of thinking with Montessorians through my own background of interest in research on the developing brain. It remains astonishing to me that Maria Montessori anticipated so much of what we now know as a result of our access to scanning machines and to the complex studies on the growth of brain cells. She observed the child and knew what was going on with that child‚s learning and development. So, if I were to return to school now, I would want you people as my teachers, or as teachers for my grandchildren.
Today I would like to talk to you about three points. The first one is that childhood itself is increasingly under siege in this world today. Many of you are wrestling with serious and important problems of poverty and intellectual disadvantage that plague many of our youngsters around the globe. This is critical work and it must be done. However, the problem I would like to discuss is even more widespread. It is related to a culture that is increasingly losing sight of the real purpose of childhood and increasingly losing respect for the very process of childhood itself. This is affecting not only children’s minds, but also their bodies, their emotional development and even their soul or self-development, the inner child. I want to discuss briefly why this loss of childhood is particularly disastrous for the future of human culture in a technological society.
The second major issue I will deal with is the computer, which is a case in point. Its use can either be beneficial or harmful, even toxic in fact. I also want to discuss the reasons behind its rapid and improper insertion into the landscape of childhood. This use is becoming widespread in the United States and elsewhere with globalisation, as there is a worldwide excitement about technology. This rapidly growing access of children to computers represents a massive failure to connect with the child’s specific needs. In fact, we are also failing to connect with the potential of the technology, which will be extremely interesting to follow. Nevertheless, we have been precipitous in expecting it to be some kind of magic bullet‚ as we say in the States, to cure all our educational woes. Clearly this is not the case. An amazing number of things are going to become possible with computers, particularly with older children - by older I mean young teens and up.
A propos the computer, I want to discuss five relevant principles of brain development. I would like to take these principles and try to apply them to computer use to show how it can be harmful and, in some cases, beneficial. The good news, of course, is that the brain can be changed. What you folks are doing out there is crucially important, since your daily interactions with young children’s brains can help rewire them for the better. Of course, you are rewiring yours too, as you sit here at this congress. The brain remains “plastic” through a lifetime, which is very nice to know.
Finally, I want to issue a challenge to you Montessorians: to adopt a mission - yet another mission, you have so many already - to carry your special developmental message out beyond the confines of congresses like this one. Get it into mainstream research. Get yourselves onto speaking platforms related to child development, ones that aren’t Montessori platforms. This way you can carry this important information about child development to the rest of the world and the rest of the educational system, which is forgetting so rapidly what childhood is all about.
Childhood Under Siege
Let me address the first point, Childhood under siege. Besides the rampant problems of poverty and disadvantage around the globe, more and more I see an adult society that has neither the understanding nor the patience with the process of childhood itself. The worship of technology exists increasingly around the globe. In the United States or Japan, for example, new technologies are often viewed -for some unknown reason — with a sort of unquestioned reverence, as an answer to difficult problems which include those of education. Increasingly I find this attitude in the rest of the world as well.
For example, we see parents who actually wish to use computers to speed up the process of their children’s development - viewing the child as a product rather than being patient with the process. Frequently I ask fathers and mothers the following question: “Why in the world would you put a four year-old in front of a computer, why would you do this?” More often from fathers, the answer is invariably: “To get him ahead of the curve.” Of course, I always say to these fathers: “What curve? Could it be possible that the child has his or her own curve? Attempts to push him ahead or his or her own curve are sure to cause difficulty sooner or later.”
Children As A “Market”
I constantly see this pressure: almost all parents want their children to become smarter, and the technology industry realizes that this is a wonderful “hook” for selling products. I wish I could say that this situation is peculiar only to my country, but I believe this trend is spreading and will doubtless go much further. I find it very worrisome to view children as a “market”, as potential consumers. Not only are parents being sold a bill of goods that says computers are going to make their children smarter‚ schools are also being given the same pitch.
Moreover, children themselves increasingly are being targeted by television and internet advertising. The message to our children is: “THINGS will make you happy.” For as a child whose personal self has been so distracted by external stimuli over the course of his lifetime, he does not know where happiness comes from. He doesn’t have a feeling that joy is something you gain from within. The child wants it from outside stimulation. This is quite a pathetic way for a human being to exist.
Let me give you a personal example of the power of advertising. I remember our oldest son, now forty-one years old, when he was about five. At the time children were just beginning to watch television. He kept seeing ads about a certain type of tennis shoe, sports shoes that were being heavily promoted to children. He begged and begged for those shoes. Well, in the first place, I couldn’t afford them. Finally his father said, “We’ll wait, save up enough money, and when you need new shoes those are the kind you can have.” Scott waited and waited. Finally we went to the shoe store and purchased the shoes. He brought them home, eagerly put them on and rushed out into the backyard. I saw him jumping up and down and I remembered the ad. It said, “Such and such shoes will make you run faster and jump higher.” Scott was a square little fellow at that time and he was out there trying to jump. He came in and his little face was so long. He said, “I can’t jump any higher.”
This example is minor compared to the kind of sales pitch given to children these days. I think we are teaching our children to be cynical before they have had an opportunity to learn to be critical. This is a great worry and something that could profoundly affect human culture in the future. Obviously this discussion is also related to the introduction of electronic stimuli, television, computers, electronic toys, video games, those horrible Gameboys‚ as substitutes for busy adults*. Many parents, and even teachers, think that a machine can do a better job of teaching children than they can. What nonsense!
As I said earlier, adults are trying to accelerate the process by which the child develops. One of the favorite software that parents in the United States buy is called, “Jumpstart Baby”. Just like a car: if it is not running, you jumpstart it with another car battery, as if the human brain and human psyche had any need for a jumpstart! As one of our commentators said, all he can see is that “our children are being raised by appliances”. And yet, we have heard from all our speakers here, starting with Professor Mazzetti, that adult human support is the most important thing we can give our children and it is what will make them more humane.
The Electronic Future?
There are features on these electronic media designed to manipulate the human brain. Teachers in traditional schools worldwide are reporting that children’s attention span is diminishing, as is their motivation. Children have been given so many rewards on television. All they have to do is push a button and get something attractive, quickly and excitingly. Language development and social skills are in decline in many classrooms because children have not learned to communicate effectively with each other. You watch them with a Gameboy: they sit there and push buttons. You can’t talk to them. You literally would have to grab the Gameboy from their hand to get them to listen or say a word to you. Everyone is locked in his own little world, staring at a screen. What does this bode in terms of the future of human development?
Once again, as Mister Toccoli said this morning, children’s internal order and rythm is something closely related to their own personal development, their own self, the hunger of the soul‚ as it was referred to earlier by Mr. Mazzetti. We are giving children electronics instead of what they really need. I believe this is particularly critical in an era where youngsters in our schools will be the first generation to confront the questions, “What is human existence as opposed to machine existence? Why should I value human intelligence when I can have access to an artificial intelligence that gives me all the data and information in the entire world at the flick of a button? Where I never have to worry about uncomfortable things like aging and arthritis or anything of that sort?”
A book I recommend to you, although it is quite alarming, is The Age of Spiritual Machines. In my mind, this is a contradiction in terms but obviously not in everyone else’s. It is written by Ray Kurzweil, a noted researcher in artificial intelligence. He believes in and sees with joy the point where, within our students’ lifetimes, machines will equal human intelligence, surpass it and become sentient so they will actually know enough to go on strike if we don’t treat them right. Although this sounds like wild robotics, this possibility has been confirmed by people such as Bill Joy, who is the chief engineer of Sun Microsystems, a huge computer firm in the United States. He agrees with the possibility of this scenario, but he views it rather as a total horror, and not with joy. He says that the potential of evil of these oncoming nano-technologies‚ artificial intelligence and whatever, is so great that he himself feels tempted to leave the profession because he is beginning to feel so uncomfortable with it.
Surely, the main point to take from all these possibilities of a technological future is that today’s young people will have to deal with extraordinary questions, ones the human race has never confronted seriously before now. If children don’t value, understand and participate in developing their own humanity, their own soul, who is going to end up in charge: humans or machines? I believe that is a question that educators ought to be thinking about.
Technology And The Developing Brain
Now let me switch to what may be happening inside the brain of the growing child when it is in a world of computers and external stimulation and the pressures discussed so far. Slides please, thank you for your help.
As brains are shaped by environments, you can do something to help the situation. If we abandon our children to electronics, electronic babysitters or technology that entertains them and deprives them of what they really need, we can literally create a generation of kids who don’t have the basic neural wiring to do the following: a) analytic thinking and original problem-solving and b) become reflective beings who can cope intelligently with some of the extraordinary questions that will eventually arise in the near future.
The brain is malleable; it can be changed by the environment during a lifetime. We will see shortly that there are periods - Maria Montessori called them sensitive periods - in which certain skills need to be experienced and acquired. Let’s move on to the next slide.
(Again, I know you are quite familiar with much of this information on neurodevelopment, so I am not devoting a long time to these points. The blue and white slides are taken from my book, Your Child’s Growing Mind. This information is available in many places, if you want to elaborate on it.)
What you have here is a diagram of a few of the billions of neurons in the cerebral cortex, the “thinking part” of the brain. The cortex is also rich with connections to other areas that sub-serve more basic functions. Neurons make connections with other neurons and create systems for learning within the brain that include multiple groups and sets of cells which connect and re-connect in dynamic and in ever changing ways. The point is that if you keep repeating the same experiences over and over again you will get stronger pathways. The more you engage in a certain activity, the stronger the tracks become and the harder it is to change this “habit of mind”.
Children need to have opportunities to experience many types of input and output. It is very important for them to do something with the stimulus they receive and respond to it in some way, acting on it physically and mentally. If they lack that experience, it is possible that the cells will not create connections. In this case, the cells will either be abbreviated in their ability to do something or they will be simply washed out of the system. This happens because the brain spends a good part of its young life pruning away, weeding out as it were, so that only the strong connections necessary for coping in that particular environment remain. Those that seem not to be needed in the environment are eliminated.
As an example of this “plasticity”, I will take language development. The human brain is programmed to develop language, but the form and the quality of the language depends on stimulation from the linguistic environment. Many of our children around the world are deficient in that they have not experienced their own language - or anyone else’s for that matter - in a close personal situation with adults or other children. They have not had the scaffolding‚ or the structure that adults automatically provide for children as they learn to speak and understand. As you all know, children also provide “scaffolding” for one another in learning and play settings. They do not get it from television or other visual media. Yet if interactive language experience is lacking in the brain, language ability may suffer. It is much harder - we are not yet sure how much is actually possible - to recover later. *Scientists do not know whether a sensitive period ends or how much can be recovered when a child has not had this type of stimulation,
In the sensory systems some things are irrecoverable, as you doubtless know. There are questions, however, about more diffused habits of mind such as attention, the ability to direct one’s own motivation and to work from an internal desire to learn. These things concern me because I see them at risk in our culture and I have a sense that there is a time after which, if not stimulated, they are not going to develop.
Growth of Neuron
We have here the immature neuron on the left and the mature neuron on the right. The neuron grows in several different ways, but it basically is linked with both experience and development in a physical program that is partially genetic - both ontogenetic and phylo-genetic. In other words, both as a particular human being and within the human species, you have a genetic code which sets a pattern. But within that pattern, there is a great deal of plasticity.
Between each neuronal junction lies a synapse, a gap where two neurons come close to connecting. They never actually touch one another, but electrical and chemical impulses send a “message” from one to another over the gap. Within that synapse there is a whole array of neuro-chemicals, technically called neuro-hormones. We have recently discovered - and Candice Pert, a neuro-physiologist, is one of the scientists who told us about this - that these hormones, these chemicals in the brain, are the same as in the other parts of the body. Again, I think that this is something that Maria Montessori sensed: that you cannot simply teach the mind. When you are teaching, when you are working with a child, you are working with the emotions, the body, his entire being. You might as well say you are teaching this child’s heart or spleen* as well as teaching his or her brain. You have to realize that you cannot communicate only with the intellectual being because, at a chemical level, our entire body is entirely linked.
That is why, of course, if you have children who are in a state of emotional trauma, crisis or shutdown, you have so much trouble reaching their intellect. A good Montessori classroom helps the child feel safe, successful, and reasonably in control of his/her own activities; this is one of the secrets of good teaching anywhere.
The Computer and neural plasticity
Unfortunately, we have virtually no research on the impact of the computer on child development. I have my own theories and if you watch children using computers you will know, as good observers of children, that what is going on is often very counterproductive. I describe these points extensively in my book, both some wonderful things happening with older students, and some really terrible things happening with students of all ages. To me these situations involved a complete loss of learning time‚ as well as the development of negative learning patterns, lack of receptivity and intellectual depth or activity, and a sort of spaced-out look. I have an excellent picture of a four year-old working with a computer, although I can’t show it to you because (ironically) we don’t have Power Point here. The four year-old looks like a zombie. When I talk to technological audiences, which I do frequently - these are the people who are placing these computers in our schools - I tell them that this picture is one of stupidity in progress.
(Slide of cartoon with caption “I only draw with software.”)
Some illustrations here. I use cartoons, not because I do not think you are intelligent enough but because they sometimes make the point more quickly.
How are we shaping our children’s brains? What is important? With technological audiences, I have to explain why this use of computers is perhaps not a good thing. Obviously I do not have to do so here.
Critical or Sensitive Periods Direct Development
“In terms of the brain, timing is everything.”
So many people believe that if something is good for a sixteen year-old, it must ipso facto be good for a six year-old. Wrong! You all know that. I do not have to belabour this point.
Montessorians understand that the sensory areas in the back of the brain are developing very actively during early childhood. Thus they need that concrete, hands-on personal experience with learning.
The frontal cortex, especially the pre-frontal areas which have to do with what you call the third level or the third plane of development, mature more slowly, with a spurt around late childhood and early adolescence. But these so-called executive areas have a long period of development, which started even as early as eight months. At this point we see the baby start to get “stranger anxiety” and then to understand object permanence.
However, the big thrust of the more intellectual and planning capacities of the executive system happens later in life. That is also a time around age eleven, twelve or thirteen when the child begins to wrestle with more abstract issues, such as, Who am I? What is my purpose in the world? What does it mean to be a friend? What kind of human being do I want to be? All these questions are very prominent, as we know, during adolescence. We also know that this period and its development - way up here in the front of the brain (slide) - continues even to age thirty. So if any of you are twenty years old, do not make any major life-decisions without thinking two or three times about it, because in ten more years you will have literally changed your mind.
So we see that the foundations in the posterior (back) part of the brain are built in early childhood from sensory experience. From those foundations, symbolic and abstract thinking arise. I know these concepts are familiar to Montessorians. Everything suggests that developments of all kinds are happening simultaneously, but everything is built on reality. I believe that when we are putting young children on computers and giving them the kind of software that currently exists, basically we are eliminating for them the symbolic link with reality. They are not using their own symbols of language and pictures in the mind (“ideation”). They are using someone else’s symbols, which are not very artistically sensitive ones to begin with (icons and cartoons for example). We are putting children into a more abstract symbolic world and skipping the steps provided in Montessori environments, which are steps that enable the child to develop his robust system of personal ideation prior to trying to move on to reasoning abstractly about other people’s ideas and theories.
(Slide of mother reading to baby)
That’s my granddaughter several years‚ back. This is how it is supposed to be.
(Slide of baby strapped to seat in front of a computer)
A child of the same age. I do not have to explain to this audience why this cartoon is obscene. This is a Jumpstart baby, a mechanistic metaphor for a human being. How disgusting!
(Slide of cartoon with the caption “I was sent back from advanced computer camp for not knowing how to button my shirt”)
Don’t skip the stages.
Brains build themselves from constructing meaningful patterns in experience.
You know this. I’ve laid the groundwork here and I am going to finish off the brain very quickly.
(Slide of girls playing with unit blocks)
And this construction of meaningful patterns is frequently done with the body, with the entire social being, by making patterns that are physical, mental, ideational, imaginative, creative, you name it. I know these materials are not Montessori ones, but unit blocks also provide a time-tested way of having children learn certain types of things. Think of the learning going on here, for example, about cause and effect: i.e. if you pile the blocks too high, they fall down. They are also learning the concept of personal responsibility, language, social skills, and so much more.
On the other hand, the computer is opaque; the child does not see the relationship between pushing the mouse or the keyboard and what is actually happening. In many applications, even many used in school, she has no chance to make or comprehend her own patterns of experience. There is a huge display of some kind, with things jumping around and changing color, but the child really has no concept of why this happened or the fact that his personal agency‚ needs to be monitored. He simply hits the buttons and hopes something wonderful will happen.
Data To Knowledge
What are we working for here? Certainly not for some meaningless learning - we have heard this several times during this congress - not for data, information, not even for a body of knowledge. We are looking for understanding, and if we do not seek to aim for understanding, we will stand no chance of arriving at wisdom. And yet, surely wisdom is what we are going to need in this upcoming century.
The brain’s motivational systems are constructed from experience.
Motivation also develops according to what you do. If you are constantly rewarded by silly little games on the keyboard for doing marginal work, you are going to lose your internal motivation. Even worse, you might never develop it. I often tell the tech teachers that the reward for doing a hard math problem is not to play a game; it is solving the math problem. That is what learning is all about. Yet much of the so-called “educational” software is full of trivial “rewards” for very little work. Those computer teachers need to go back to school and study to be Montessorians. Montessorians would never promote this stuff.
Finally, brains need language for so many important human functions - not only for analyzing but also for solving problems, paying attention, being a social being. Most people do not realize how much of our attentional systems are mediated by inner speech, the quiet talk inside your own head that helps you direct and plan your life. Our children have no quiet time inside their heads; they are buzzed and barraged and beeped at and over-stimulated all day long. In the United States, even in middleclass households, children are dragged off to babysitters or lessons or daycare or whatever - when they are not being buzzed or beeped at - so they really do not have much time either to reflect and become thoughtful human beings. This concern is foremost in my mind as I consider the great philosophical and global challenges which will inevitably confront the next generation.
This is my challenge to Montessorians. Do we want childhood to be viewed as a product or can we see that true mental and personal development involves a process? How can we convince the world that childhood is a long and sometimes messy but beautiful process that must be allowed to come along in its own way and its own time, surrounded by the love and support of wise adults? You people have the background of understanding; perhaps you can help us convince the world that we must work together to raise a generation of young people equipped to be thoughtful and caring human beings - philosophers as well as technicians.
(Slide of cartoon with caption “Can Jennifer come out and work?”)
Are we trying to make children into small adults? Are we trying to fit them into the cog of the system? Look out! This could happen in your country. If it does, my last slide shows what we will probably see in the future
(Final slide of cartoon with caption
-“What is the meaning of life?”
-“I don’t know, the computers are down!”)
