Many of our Right Brain students and customers hail from around the world, so I won't take too much of your time pulling you into American politics. But because education is a major issue in the election, Right Brain Education seems to be popping up as a possible solution to making education more effective for every type of learner.
The US "No Child Left Behind" government policy has, sadly, left many children (and frustrated teachers) down. Politicians meet everyday American families, teachers and children from state to state. They inevitably see and hear the effects of this policy and have to address it.
Enter, the right brain.
"Education is only a true education if we're developing both the left and right brain of the student," says Mike Huckabee (former Arkansas governor) when addressing education during a live teleconference. "The left brain is great for math and science and all the logical forms of education, but knowing what to do with what a student has learned is as important as what they've learned. Music and art, teaching the stimulation of the creative side, is absolutely critical to a total well-rounded education.
"Music students do 20 points better on SAT scores than nonmusic students. They learn foreign languages better," the former governor and presidential candidate said. "Take a room of 5-year-olds and give them a piece of paper and crayon and every one of them draws a picture. … When he's 15 that kid won't draw the picture or sing the song. Somehow the education system beat out of him or her the creativity that was innate in that student."
What Mr. Huckabee did not say is that when the right brain is FULLY utilized, children benefit from speed learning using their creative, photographic mind to scan information much faster and more joyfully than when it's continually repeated through left-brain drills.
An educational system infused with right brain techniques will truly leave no child left behind--and, as Reverend Jeremiah Wright rightly addressed in his NACCP address last night: it can close the gap on inequality in education as a whole.
Please read this excerpt from his speech.
"Dr. Hale showed us that in comparing African-American children and European-American children in the field of education, we were comparing apples and rocks.
"And in so doing, we kept coming up with meaningless labels like EMH, educable mentally handicapped, TMH, trainable mentally handicapped, ADD, attention deficit disorder.
"And we were coming up with more meaningless solutions like reading, writing and Ritalin. Dr. Hale's research led her to stop comparing African-American children with European-American children and she started comparing the pedagogical methodologies of African-American children to African children and European-American children to European children. And bingo, she discovered that the two different worlds have two different ways of learning. European and European-American children have a left brained cognitive object oriented learning style and the entire educational learning system in the United States of America. Back in the early '70s, when Dr. Hale did her research was based on left brained cognitive object oriented learning style. Let me help you with fifty cent words.
"Left brain is logical and analytical. Object oriented means the student learns from an object. From the solitude of the cradle with objects being hung over his or her head to help them determine colors and shape to the solitude in a carol in a PhD program stuffed off somewhere in a corner in absolute quietness to absorb from the object. From a block to a book, an object. That is one way of learning, but it is only one way of learning.
"African and African-American children have a different way of learning.
"They are right brained, subject oriented in their learning style. Right brain that means creative and intuitive. Subject oriented means they learn from a subject, not an object. They learn from a person. Some of you are old enough, I see your hair color, to remember when the NAACP won that tremendous desegregation case back in 1954 and when the schools were desegregated. They were never integrated. When they were desegregated in Philadelphia, several of the white teachers in my school freaked out. Why? Because black kids wouldn't stay in their place. Over there behind the desk, black kids climbed up all on them.
"Because they learn from a subject, not from an object. Tell me a story. They have a different way of learning. Those same children who have difficulty reading from an object and who are labeled EMH, DMH and ADD. Those children can say every word from every song on every hip hop radio station half of who's words the average adult here tonight cannot understand. Why? Because they come from a right-brained creative oral culture like the (greos) in Africa who can go for two or three days as oral repositories of a people's history and like the oral tradition which passed down the first five book in our Jewish bible, our Christian Bible, our Hebrew bible long before there was a written Hebrew script or alphabet. And repeat incredulously long passages like Psalm 119 using mnemonic devices using eight line stanzas. Each stanza starting with a different letter of the alphabet. That is a different way of learning. It's not deficient, it is just different. Somebody say different. I believe that a change is going to come because many of us are committed to changing how we see other people who are different."
Bravo, Reverend Wright. Bravo, Mike Huckabee.
Children desperately need a new way to learn.
Let's lead the way!
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Secret Huckabee Turns Out To Be Clintonesque
By JOSH GERSTEIN
Staff Reporter of the Sun
January 3, 2008
http://www2.nysun.com/article/68832
Transcript of Jeremiah Wright's speech to NAACP
Given April 27, 2008
http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/04/28/wright.transcript/
