Is modern life cooking up a new kind of human being, whose altered circuitry will cause them to think and act differently from people today? It sounds like science fiction, but a growing number of specialists feel that tomorrow’s classrooms are likely to be filled with pupils who will think more episodically, have shorter attention spans, communicate through pictures rather than words, have more learning difficulties, and be less able to control their impulses and emotions than the children of today…

Cuddles, singing, eye contact, talking and movement are all known to pattern a pre-schooler’s brain and to help with reading and writing, and social and emotional well-being later on. But today’s children are getting less of them. “As a society, we don’t value nurture,” says Palmer…

A lack of active play could also be affecting how children’s brains develop. Sally Goddard Blythe, of the Institute of Neuro-Physiological Psychology, says that many children now retain primitive, baby responses long after they should have developed higher levels of brain functioning, and that these reflexes impede learning. A new report from the Institute, on the progress of more than 1,000 children in primary schools, shows that just 10 minutes of structured exercises a day can improve not only children’s balance and coordination, but also their concentration and achievement in maths, spelling, reading and writing…

In the United States, Jane Healy, an educational psychologist, has charted how children are becoming less attuned to written and spoken information, lack perseverance, are impatient, and show little curiosity about the world…

And Martin Westwell, deputy director of the Institute for the Future of the Mind, at Oxford University, points out that it is the cultural value we impose on any changes that give them meaning. “People say children using computers will grow up with terrible handwriting, but you could say: ‘So What?’”

Neither should agents of change be labelled good or bad, he says. “In some instances, technology appears to be changing the way we think, and there are people who feel nervous about this. But it’s not the technology that’s at fault, it’s what you do with it that matters.”

Source: Belfast Telegraph
http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/features/story.jsp?story=716965