Markham
Commentary

Monthly thoughts on partnering with the millennial generation

Web: http://www.thommarkham.com/
Email: thom@thomarkham.com

In this issue:

Heart Intelligence: The New Frontier
 

Resources Listed in this issue:

http://www.21stcenturyskills.org/

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Dear Colleague:

In my view it’s time to forward a worldwide conversation about education that has not yet taken place much in public, but which has begun to rumble through every country like a mega earthquake. I label the conversation ‘educating from within.’ At the core of the conversation is a basic fact: 50% of the world’s population is under age 25 and they will come to adulthood in a technological, globally linked world that the current generation of adults can barely foresee. Mostly, we respond to this millennial wave of youth using outdated assumptions, including the beliefs that children won’t learn unless subjected to a set of rigid standards, that schools exist to teach students to compete in a global economy, and that harnessing children to an ever-improved curriculum will finally, at last, force them to learn what they need to know.

None of this will work, or is working. I’m not the first to note this, but I do sense a new storyline emerging. First, we have learned that love, respect, and communication are better motivators than fear, meaning that educators must find ways to engage youth through personalized appeals to their dreams and aspirations. Second, youth want to cooperate, not compete. Hammering them with grim statistics about “losing the competitive edge” will yield little in the way of performance; if we want high achievement, we need to help them become skillful, knowledgeable, and passionate collaborators. And third, given the swirl of forces surrounding their lives, the children themselves—their very nature and being—is changing in ways we do not understand, meaning we had better inquire within about their state of mind and heart.

I invite you to join me in some occasional thinking about the millennial generation and how adults respond to a worldwide shift that requires us to customize learning for a global, transforming world.

-- Thom Markham, Ph.D.

Heart Intelligence: The New Frontier

Like many other problems facing us today, solutions will come only after a deep rethinking process. I believe this is true of education: How we retool education for the 21^st century hinges on how we define the nature of intelligence itself. The standard ‘scientific’ approach of measuring intelligence through IQ tests feeds the notion that performance is a fixed commodity, and that learning can be defined and measured in terms of numbers. This drives the testing mania that most educators now see as counterproductive—and which results in a narrowed curriculum that shortchanges kids and stifles creativity.

The recent resurrection of the whole child approach to education is a first response to these concerns. Intuitively, we recognize that integrating both academic and human development into schools helps students act more ‘intelligently.’ We also can see that our children, who are growing up in the throes of searing change and fragmented values, need stronger emotional support systems than ever before if they are to have the opportunity to demonstrate their abilities.

Supporting the heart as well as the head is proving to be good for education—and now there is evidence showing us exactly why. Over the last 15 years, major scientific advances have revealed that the deep, rich, and mysterious process of learning improves when it incorporates the enormous power of heart intelligence.

Consider these new facts:

·         The heart has a heart-brain of up to 100,000 neurons that processes information just like the brain does.

·         Eighty percent of nerve traffic between the heart and brain goes upward from the heart to the brain.

·         The heart regulates the autonomic nervous system, particularly the parasympathetic system, which is designed to relax the body and prepare it for optimum performance.

·         Positive emotions activate this heart-led network, with widespread beneficial impacts on the entire system of brain and body.

This information indicates that the heart, rather than the brain, is the central organ that transforms emotions, positive or negative, into physiological processes that regulate stress and anxiety, and affect cognition and performance. This transformation occurs in two ways. First, stress management yields cognitive benefits. As anxiety decreases, the brain responds by moving its operations from the hind brain—the fight or flight center—forward to the frontal lobes—the center for attention, focus, critical thinking, and planning. Second, as the nervous system becomes optimally balanced, or ‘coherent,’ the body and brain begin to enter the ‘zone,’ the place of peak performance.

Technologies and methods are now in place to activate the power of the heart. A simple set of strategies helps students to generate a positive emotion and, using their mind’s eye, move it into the region of the heart. Accompanied by breathing exercises, this focus actually shifts their heart rhythms and activates the parasympathetic response, along with other positive hormonal responses. (Another new fact—the heart is now classified as an endocrine gland.) The result is less stress, greater clarity, improved concentration, and a feeling of well-being.

These self-generated results can be tracked on software on a PC or hand-held device, providing a powerful feedback loop as students see themselves responding to positive emotions in real time. This exercise takes some practice, as you might expect, but a few 20-minute sessions a week show results such as decreased feelings of anxiety, more positive interactions with peers, improved communication, and—get ready—better test scores.

The U.S. Department of Education just completed a million-dollar study of the heart and learning, and its findings support these claims. Its TestEdge National Demonstration Study (TENDS), conducted by researchers at the Institute of HeartMath (http://www.heartmath.org/) in collaboration with Claremont Graduate University, focused on whether heart-based technologies can improve emotional self-regulation and psychophysiological coherence (meaning that the body and brain work in harmony), and whether these changes enhance academic performance, stress management, emotional stability, relationships, and overall well-being.

The answer to these questions is: absolutely yes. The first part of the study, carried out with 980 tenth graders in California, using control and experimental groups, showed significant reductions in test anxiety and related emotional indicators, along with 10- to 25-point increases in California standardized test scores. The second part of the study, conducted in eight states, provided compelling evidence for a causal link between physiological changes and the cognitive functions associated with learning and performance.

This study builds upon 15 years of research that shows the power of the heart and its ability to improve learning and performance. I think it is time to take the research on heart intelligence and get it into school programs. Here’s why:

·         The link between emotions and learning has a physiological and, therefore, scientific basis.

·         The methods that allow students (or any of us) to manage emotions and improve performance have been established. (Attention golfers: 90% of PGA golfers use these techniques to improve their game.)

·         These methods can be incorporated easily into schooling, with dramatic results.

In fact, we now know how to stimulate the flow state made famous by psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. This finding could be key to a school system seeking new ways to prepare young people for the world. Using heart-based technologies, we can more readily teach students to improve their collaboration, communication, and creativity skills, while also honing their ability to concentrate, remember, and find solutions to problems.

Another way of saying this? We now know how to help young people behave intelligently, which is emerging as the definition of intelligence itself. The capacity to learn and excel is a whole body, whole mind exercise—and we can help every child do it better. If you’d like more details, call me at (415) 806-9976, or email me at thom@thommarkham.com.

Next month: Walking the Talk: How do we teach and assess 21st Century Skills?