ATTENTION!
Neuro-ideology
on road
[Neuro-] myths are a drain on time and money, and it is important to explore and expose them. So which popular neuromyths exist in schools and how did they catch on?
https://www.theguardian.com/teacher-network/2016/feb/24/four-neuromyths-still-prevalent-in-schools-debunked?CMP=share_btn_tw
Such
things cannot be said too often. Underneath, however, still lies the great
unspoken darkness of biological determination, holding pervasive
ideological hegemony over our society's understanding of what it is
that forms our humanity.
Amongst
other ills, this ideology brings with it the assumption that motor
disorders are physical (biological) in their essence, and
consequently in their 'treatment' too (and don't forget its hegemony
within psychiatry and 'mental illness' too, never mind the
ordinary circumstances of developing childhood and education).
Oliver Sacks spoke of –
...the
stultifying phrenological neurology... [that] could be replaced by
the wonderful notion of functional systems with different components.
Phrenology was an earlier science of
cerebral localisation, as illustrated by the picture above
borrowed from the article in the Guardian. We
are all too sophisticated nowadays to thing anything of the sort –
aren't we? Are we sure?
Sunday's posting on Oliver Sacks and A. R. Luriya related to this:
The Guardian's report
provided classic empirical (psychological)
demonstrations of a wider something in operation.
Because
it is unlikely that the popularity of neuroscience findings in the
public sphere will wane any time soon, we see in the current results
more reasons for caution when applying neuroscientific findings to
social issues. Even if expert practitioners can easily distinguish
good neuroscience explanations from bad, they must not assume that
those outside the discipline will be as discriminating.
The use of brain
images to represent the level of brain activity associated with
cognitive processes influenced ratings of the scientific merit of the
reported research, compared to identical articles including no image,
a bar graph, or a topographical map. This effect occurred for
fictional articles that included errors in the scientific reasoning
in the articles, and in a real article in which there were no such
errors. The present results lend support to the oft mentioned notion
that there is something particularly persuasive about brain images
with respect to conferring credibility to cognitive neuroscience
data.
I
myself, having long given up on being a psychologist, find an
ideology-based explanation sufficient for everyday practical
purposes.
Either
way, Conductive Education offers a powerful demonstration of a quite
contrary (pedagogic) model in operation. Its substantive benefits
aside, the essence of the practice of Conductive Education should be
defended, protected, treasured, for this wider social purpose too.
At the
very least sound a caution next time you are presented with
neuro-assertions concerning Conductive Education – or, worse, you
are tempted yourself to express some of your own.
References
Bradley,
B. et al. (2017) Four
neuromyths that are still prevalent in schools – debunked,
Guardian,
24 February
McCabe,
D. P. (2008) Seeing is believing: the effect of brain images on
judgments of scientific reasoning, Cognition,
vol. 107 , pp. 343–352
Weisberg,
D. S. (2008) The
seductive allure of neuroscience explanations, Journal
of Cognitive Neuroscience, vol. 20, no 3, pp. 470-477
Labels: Neuropsychology
posted by Andrew Sutton | February 28, 2017
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