Will Richardson

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Kids, Not Schools, are “Individually Wired”

September 4, 2011 By Will Richardson

Gardner Campbell shared this excerpt of John Medina’s Brain Rules book via his Kindle:

You cannot change the fact that the human brain is individually wired. Every student’s brain, every employee’s brain, every customer’s brain is wired differently. That’s the Brain Rule. You can either accede to it or ignore it. The current system of education chooses the latter, to our detriment. It needs to be torn down and newly envisioned, in a Manhattan Project-size commitment to individualizing instruction. We might, among other things, dismantle altogether grade structures based on age.

When I read quotes like this, quotes that articulate something we all know but rarely give voice to in education, I wonder what it will take for all of us to collectively say “Yeah, that’s right. Let’s do something about it." 

Learning is already becoming more individualized…outside of school. We need to figure out how to make that happen inside classrooms as well.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: brain, education, John Medina, learning

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