Leland’s article was interesting and insightful. His thesis and evidence for the importance of social learning as paramount to evolution of the species is thought-provoking and ignites the following questions.
- How can eduction set a non-natural environment to help engender an atmosphere for innovation and thought evolution?
- What components are necessary in group education to help facilitate an environment where inquiry and exploration can lead to innovation?
I was particularly interested in the following excerpt from Leland’s article
“….natural selection does not favor more and more social learning but rather a tendency toward better and better social learning. Animals do not need a big brain to copy, but they do need a big brain to copy well.”
Does our current academic environment provide an atmosphere that supports and encourages innovation?
Dr. Dan Siegel, in his Mindsight Approach to Interpersonal Neurobiology, created The Wheel of Awareness, which helps depict the components of awareness and knowing, both individually and interpersonally. Siegel highlights the prime conditions for learning is a calm awareness which helps broaden the field of the varying components that are involved in a process.
I’m Siegel’s approach, neural integration is foundational to learning well. Reductionistic and binary measures of assessment negate this process of integration…at least in their present application. Children need “big brains to copy well.” How can we use the tools created by the culture to help expand the thought processes of the upcoming learners, rather than reducing the knowledge being passed down to binary measures?
