Why Do Schools Flunk Biology? - By LynNell Hancock - part 1
Note: The following article is reprinted from Newsweek, February 19, 1996. ©1996, Newsweek, Inc.
Biology is a staple at most American high schools. Yet when it comes to the biology of the students themselves — how their brains develop and retain knowledge — school officials would rather not pay attention to the lessons. Can first graders handle French? What time should school start? Should music be cut? Biologists have some important evidence to offer. But not only are they ignored, their findings are often turned upside down.
Force of habit rules the hallways and classrooms. Neither brain science nor education research has been able to free the majority of America's schools from their 19th-century roots. If more administrators were tuned into brain research, scientists argue, not only would schedules change, but subjects such as foreign language and geometry would be offered to much younger children. Music and gym would be daily requirements. Lectures, work sheets and rote memorization would be replaced by hands-on materials, drama and project work. And teachers would pay greater attention to children's emotional connections to subjects. “We do more education research than anyone else in the world,” says Frank Vellutino, a professor of educational psychology at State University of New York at Albany, “and we ignore more as well.”
Plato once said that music “is a more potent instrument than any other for education.” Now scientists know why. Music, they believe, trains the brain for higher forms of thinking. Researchers at the University of California, Irvine, studied the power of music by observing two groups of preschoolers. One group took piano lessons and sang daily in chorus. The other did not. After eight months the musical 3-year-olds were expert puzzlemasters, scoring 80% higher than their playmates did in spatial intelligence — the ability to visualize the world accurately.
This skill later translates into complex math and engineering skills. “Early music training can enhance a child's ability to reason,” says Irvine physicist Gordon Shaw. Yet music education is often the first “frill” to be cut when school budgets shrink. Schools on average have only one music teacher for every 500 children, according to the National Commission on Music Education.
- Why Do Schools Flunk Biology? - part 1
- Why Do Schools Flunk Biology? - part 2
- Why Do Schools Flunk Biology? - part 3