Discipline, Focus, and the Adolescent Brain: An Experiment in Thought

     When I'm tutoring any student, I want to see results as quickly as possible. If I were tutoring continually but weren't seeing results, then all I would be doing is wasting my time and energy, the student's time and energy, and the money parents pay for tutoring. So when I'm first speaking with a parent or parents, I'm going to ask the parent(s) about their child's well-being. Is he/she sleeping enough? Is he/she eating a balanced diet and getting enough water throughout the day? I want to make sure the student is in the very best place to learn with the greatest efficiency possible. Before I start any tutoring session, the first question I'm going to ask the student is: "How much water have you had to drink in the last hour or so?" I have good reason for taking this approach. I'll explain below.        

Sports programs are often of tremendous value in preparing our youth for adulthood. But there is a time and place for everything, and we have no reason to believe that the forms of motivation that work well on the field will necessarily work as well in the classroom.

The Problem

     When I was in high school during the 1990s, teachers and tutors weren't always very inspiring. When they talked about how we should learn material we found challenging, they would often say, "Well, sometimes you just have to buckle down and spend several hours with it!" Or they treated the learning material like we were afraid of it: "You just have to set aside your doubts and fears, and just tackle it." Like many coaches, they appeared to take their cues for inspiring young students from Nike's popular advertising slogan, "Just do it!" And I imagine that in the early 2000s the same people began to speak in terms of "Git-R-Done!" For some of us, their approach worked. But when it didn't work for other students like me, they often blamed those of us who weren't learning as well because we weren't moved by their well-intended but still simple message. The problem was that despite their intentions, their words were no better than the Nike slogan. I think many of us were actually looking for an entirely different, more enjoyable approach to learning. Now THAT would have helped us to focus better!

     We've all heard that the brand name Nike comes from Ancient Greek, meaning victory or triumph. The Greeks were obsessed with competition and winning. The verb νικάω (nikao) meant to conquer, defeat, or vanquish. These are all accusative verbs in English, which take a direct object. Individuals (in language: the subject) don't just conquer, they have to conquer some challenge, challenger, or opponent (in language: the direct object). Was this the sort of approach we were supposed to take to learning? Were we supposed to look at the learning material and determinedly promise to vanquish it? Of course, I'm being facetious here. But really, why would we have looked at Orwell's Animal Farm, sets of Spanish vocabulary, or solving for y = mx + b as some sort of opponent we needed to conquer? Why shouldn't we have been interested in understanding? Did those teachers not see how "Greek" their approach was? Or is it that Americans appear to be descended from the ancient Greeks when it comes to their preoccupation with competition and winning? 

     The curiously Greek character of their thinking didn't end there. Many of their ideas about studying with discipline were also out of ancient Greek philosophy. I'll explain. The right thing to do was to "study hard and make good grades." Most weekdays we had the choice: we could either rigorously concentrate on our homework assignments in the evening or we could haphazardly slop through our work and then go get burgers with friends and shoot the breeze. The question wasn't whether we recognized the right thing to do. We all knew (on some level, at least) the right thing was to "buckle down" on our homework assignments and then wait until the weekend to go have fun. As our teachers saw it, when we sped through our homework and then went out on week nights, the problem was that we recognized the right thing to do but just chose not to do it. This is the problem that early Greek philosophers recognized as ἀκρασία (akrasia): recognizing the good but just not doing it. None of my teachers ever appeared concerned about whether I was getting enough sleep, or whether I had gotten enough water to drink before I sat down to study in the evenings, both of which are indispensable for teenage brains.    

The Proposed Solution

     Let's take a deeper look at the first problem I outlined above, of learning material being presented as a challenge to conquer. It presupposes a strictly subject-object relationship. To break this down, I'll discuss what it means to learn Shakespeare's tragic drama Romeo and Juliet, a work that has profoundly shaped our popular culture. Theoretically, a strikingly intelligent student could learn the dramatic work by memorizing the cast and remembering the key words that describe each character (Mercutio is humorous but coarse, prone to sudden temperamental outbursts). He/she might also not just read the work, but memorize long passages from the work (not just the typical "Romeo, Romeo, wherefore art thou..."). It's possible to learn this way and yet never deeply understand any of the story's morals (adults shouldn't become consumed by old rivalries, teenagers shouldn't let their emotions rule their actions). There are students who take such a tactical approach to learning that they fail to walk away with the ability to analyze the work and evaluate what is happening in their own lives and in the lives of those around them based on those morals.

From Shakespeare's leftover notes: "When I sat down to write Romeo and Juliet, I was thinking about how to caution the youth of the future, especially in the 21st Century, that they should be careful and not lose their minds when they fall in love. High school shall be difficult enough already without that added problem."

     Learning should involve a sort of continual back-and-forth dynamic between the student and the learning material, at least in Literature and History. Ultimately, the student should be able to understand the morals of stories and apply them in his/her own thinking and decision making. This way he/she avoids completely abandoning reason when falling in love. The student doesn't just act upon (or defeat) the class material by learning it; that material acts upon the student as well, instructing him/her to try to stay fairly level-headed when falling in love. See my attempt at humor with a fake quote in the caption underneath the image of Shakespeare.

     Now let's consider another example from Economics. Hypothetically, a student could choose to learn just enough about the principle of supply and demand "on paper" to pass an exam over it. And let's be clear: when students first begin learning Economics, the best approach should involve flashcards with vocabulary terms on the front and definitions on the back. But the real question is whether after a while, the student is able to think in terms of newly acquired knowledge when facing everyday real-life situations, apply that knowledge, and analyze economic situations based on their new knowledge. Being able to do this requires not so much the ability to "buckle down," but much more than that: it takes flexibility of mind.    

     The question here is centered on the purpose of education. If it is mainly about passing exams with high marks, then moving to the next category of learning material and studying enough to pass that exam with high marks, and then moving toward the next major hurdle, then we will produce encyclopedic minds that are ill-equipped to handle real problems once the youth move beyond adolescence. Or worse, we will produce minds with an amazing capacity for learning and then forgetting, still unable to solve problems in the real world. When I first learned Economics, its principles consumed my mental energy. I thought all the time about who was buying which items, in large or small quantities, and at which price point. I was no longer content just buying some commodity. I wanted to know about the raw materials used, its level of quality, where it was made, etc. 

 "If [education] is mainly about passing exams with high marks, then moving to the next category of learning material and studying enough to pass that exam with high marks, and then moving toward the next major hurdle, then we will produce encyclopedic minds that are ill-equipped to handle real problems once the youth move beyond adolescence. Or worse, we will produce minds with an amazing capacity for learning and then forgetting, still unable to solve problems in the real world." 

      The task of acquiring knowledge is much more than just a challenge we need to defeat. On the contrary, we should work toward an INTERACTIVE relationship with knowledge. Admittedly, this is not always easy. But when we take that approach, we reap the benefits that come with allowing knowledge to challenge us personally so that we can continually improve ourselves. And on that note, let us to return to our question of how to work in the most focused and disciplined manner possible. We have to moves beyond defining discipline solely in terms of "Just do it!" or alternatively, "Git-R-Done!" In ancient Greece, weighing the question of whether or not someone had enough will power was a very effective way of thinking because it forced people to ask themselves whether they were up to accomplishing the challenges they faced. This way of thinking is still effective, and I am not suggesting we dispose of that idea. But in an era of neuroscience and artificial intelligence, we should first establish the best conditions under which the brain is able to learn. Then we should reevaluate which approaches help adolescents to focus best on what they are learning. The question of discipline, as it turns out, should actually come last.     

     When I look back on my growing up years, I am struck by the fact that the 1990s were the decade in which neurological research really began to take shape and bring new knowledge to the fore. Neuroscientists were learning a great deal about the adolescent brain. As a result, we are forced to reckon with new questions. How does our physical and emotional environment impact our brain's ability to learn? What helps its neurons to fire more consistently? Which chemicals are most necessary for the brain to be able to process and store new information, as well use newly learned information in one classroom setting to solve problems presented in another classroom setting? Now I clearly see that there was considerable lag time between the newly emerging knowledge coming from neuroscience and our understanding about how to implement that exciting new knowledge in the classroom. One of the best books to help me understand that implementation is the 2nd edition of Eric Jensen's Teaching with the Brain in Mind.     

Conclusion

     And so I always ask the questions I brought up during the opening paragraph of this blog piece. Research has shown that dehydration is likely the most predominant factor in why so many adolescents are not learning better than they are. We just don't always think about it because when we think of the word dehydration we picture athletes in summertime, drenched in sweat and desperately needing water/electrolytes. When I understood what the word dehydration means to neuroscientists, I had to DISCIPLINE myself to make sure I get enough water throughout the day so that I am able to think more clearly about my work. And I'm well past my teenage years. Since reaching the decision to go back into the classroom, though, I have considered it essential to learn as much as possible about cognitive development in adolescents from the standpoint of neuroscience. What I have learned has shaped my approach to working with teenagers. After all, if I expect students to give their best effort and to learn with focus and discipline, I had better do everything I can to make sure that they are in the best position to do that!