Most people have a dominant hand, a dominant foot and a dominant eye. And so it goes for the brain, and for most of us, the left hemisphere is dominant. The school system generally rewards left-brained individuals, who think in a logical, linear fashion, and learn best through hearing. Right-brained individuals think in a non-linear, intuitive fashion, and learn best through seeing and feeling. At school, right-brained children will often be marked down for not showing the working used to reach their answers. What their teachers fail to realize is these children don't have the usual working to show, having reached the correct destination by an unorthodox route. Einstein is a good example of a right-brained person who consistently scored poorly at school.
According to right-brain educators such as and , accessing the right brain not only enables a child to learn more efficiently, it can unlock genius-level abilities. It is not that learning with the right brain makes someone a genius, but rather that there is a genius inside every one of us – if only we can access the right brain.
What kind of abilities are we talking about? Talents like speed reading and photographic memory – and the seemingly limitless powers of recall associated with them. Abilities like producing an accurate drawing of something only once glanced at, or telling instantly that the number of items being shown to us is 97 – and not 98 or 96. Prodigious musical talents and the ability of also rely on the use of the right brain.
Seeing like Einstein
If any of the above rings a bell, it is probably because you are familiar with the phenomenon of – autistic or otherwise mentally deficient individuals with genius-level skills in specific areas. According to studies using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) scans, both geniuses and savants show greater-than-average activation in the right hemisphere of the brain. The left brain is responsible for verbal processing, which explains why savants (who commonly have damage to the left brain) typically experience difficulties with language. The right hemisphere is responsible for visual and spatial processing, and the ability to "see" problems in multiple dimensions is one of the most prodigious talents of the greatest physicists. Interestingly, Einstein not only possessed this ability, he also suffered from language delays in childhood, inviting suggestions that he was a savant.
So why can’t we all use our right brain the way Einstein did? Our left brain is dominant for a reason: by suppressing the activities of the right, it filters out a surfeit of data constantly bombarding our senses. This enables us to make sense of reality and avoid sensory overload. Without the left-brain filter, autism sufferers typically are hypersensitive to sensory stimuli and find ordinary social interactions overwhelming. The rest of us take for granted, for example, the ability to hold a conversation without being distracted by background noises. But because our perception of reality is controlled by the left brain, this means a great deal of the sensory input we receive is entering beneath the conscious radar, making it difficult to access that information at will.
The idea of right-brain teaching is to change both the way we learn and the way we recall data. The normal way to memorize information is to store it in our short-term memory (in the left brain) and use repetition to transfer it to our long-term memory (in the right brain). By bypassing the left brain and accessing our long-term memory directly, we learn faster. We can also learn to recall information normally not accessible because it has been received on a subconscious level – say, through speed reading. The only way to achieve this is by freeing the right brain from its suppression by the left. In doing so, the right brain becomes activated – much as it is in a genius or savant (or small child!).
Early childhood: the genius state
Learning with the left brain requires conscious effort; right-brain learning happens subconsciously, and so effortlessly. In small children, the right brain is already activated – which helps explain how children soak up information like sponges. In small children (and savants and geniuses), the right brain is activated because it is dominant. This is because the right hemisphere of the brain develops before the left, remaining dominant until the age of three and a half. As the brain gradually shifts from right- to left-hemisphere dominance, right-brain lessons will increasingly need to follow on from deep relaxation and visualization. These techniques enable students to enter an or absorbent state, which is highly compatible with right-brain learning. This is the state small children are naturally in.
If you find the idea of a genius or savant in everyone far-fetched, consider the following study by the University of Sydney’s Centre for the Mind. Director Allan Snyder uses harmless magnetic stimulation to temporarily switch off the left hemisphere of his subjects’ brains – thereby unlocking savant-like abilities. In the minutes after receiving the stimulation, subjects perform measurably better at tasks such as drawing a picture from memory, or guessing a large number of dots flashed up on a computer screen.
Whereas Snyder was able only to temporarily elicit these special abilities, right-brain educators aim to permanently endow their students with right-brain talents. Grown-up Doman children continue being able to instantly perceive quantity as adults. As with Shichida's students, such children have the ability to mentally solve mathematical equations of a complexity that would require most people to use a calculator.
Now that you understand the basics of right-brain teaching, you can find out more about the Doman and Shichida programs. You can also discover how to teach your baby or at home using right-brain techniques.
See related Forum Discussions:
|
Print page
Send to friend
