Reading through news items and newspaper columns these days is not for the lighthearted. I have lost track of the numerous times I have despaired, become cynical and felt numb by the items that make news and the analysis of experts in the opinion columns of newspapers and media websites. It is crisis, more crises and one cannot help but wonder – what next? For some friends and colleagues who have lost their jobs, houses and more, my feeling is merely intellectual!
Notwithstanding, a couple of insignificant news items caught my attention recently. The first is a US research that suggests that the brains of children from low-income families process information differently to those of their wealthier counterparts. The researchers discovered that “normal” (what their definition of normal is we are not told, but can deduce) 9 and 10 year olds from wealthy and poor backgrounds emit differing electrical vibes in that part of the brain (prefrontal cortex) linked to problem solving. This finding, we are told, ought to be a wake-up call for social deprivation plaguing rich nations. For their test an image, that the children were not briefed on, was flashed on a screen and their brain responses were measured. Mindful of previous researches (with racist overtones) that tried to prove that peoples far from the ends of Europe were not as civilized as enlightened Eurocentric folks, I wonder what the images used were and how they were selected. Certainly such a selection will not be neutral, as it is the privileged doing the selecting and the research!
We are told that children from low socio-economic background are not getting full brain development! While common sense ought to suggest that all those who live in economically deprived contexts are certainly disadvantaged, and that these children may not have the opportunity to develop their brain the way rich and privileged children’s brain cells are pampered, I am keen to know how these researchers arrived at their method to carry out the test. Would the world and images of the deprived be their yard stick? I wonder, for instance, what would be the response if the images that were flashed would have derived from the underprivileged world and their socio-economic experiential contexts!
The other recent news item that caught my attention is the proposal that primary school pupils should be taught how to live happy and healthy lives – as a way of preparing children for life outside school. Among other things, the idea is that such re-direction in learning, especially on emotional well-being, social skills, and on more space for play, will make responsible citizens out of our children. While these are all common sense strategies (supposing that happiness can be taught!) for which we do not need to spend huge sums of money to put into reports that people will not read, what all this reflects is the way society has degenerated and is disintegrating all around us and how we are actually clutching at straws.
The bottom line is that no amount of brain measuring and happiness teaching in schools will make a difference, if we do not address the fundamental flaws especially as they pertain to our economic life and life together in community. In spite of our demise, which offers an opportunity for a radical overhaul, we are pumping more liquidity into insolvent financial structures and encouraging people to go in more debt and to shop till they drop. We continue to wrap our lives around a wild neo-liberal and crassly individualistic economic life.
One can be cynical enough to ask whether it is those folks with the developed prefrontal cortex, highly geared for problem solving, who have landed us is this economic mess, the inability to think out of the box, and in the process have turned us into less happy and irresponsible citizens. Sure as hell they are unable to get us out of this mess! We may just need those under-developed children who use their prefrontal cortex less – yes, those from low-income families - to get us out of this mess or tell us how to operate our economic lives. Perhaps, they should be running things! And it may be, we will also learn a thing or two from them as to what happiness is all about, what it means to give us all an equal stake in strategies to regain direction and make sense of our lives. It is time to measure "common" sense - an endangered gift!
© copyright Jagessar December 13, 2008 Image Credit jagessar
