Education and Emotion

Last week, I criticized David Brooks for his conservative interpretations of modern neuroscience. This week, I'm happy to report that Brooks' policy recommendations are much more interesting (and scientifically accurate, at least in my opinion):

If we want to have successful human capital policies, we have to get over the definition of education as something that takes place in schools between the hours of 8 and 3, between the months of September and June, and between the ages of 5 and 18.

As Bob Marvin of the University of Virginia points out, there is a mountain of evidence demonstrating that early childhood attachments shape lifelong learning competence.

Children do have inborn temperaments and intelligence. Nevertheless, students make the most of their natural dispositions when they have a secure emotional base from which to explore, and even the brightest children stumble when there is chaos inside.

Research over the past few decades impressively shows that children who emerge from attentive, attuned parental relationships do better in school and beyond. They tend to choose friends wisely. They handle frustration better. They're more resilient in the face of setbacks. They grow up to become more productive workers.

On the other hand, as Martha Farah of the University of Pennsylvania has found, students who do not feel emotionally safe tend not to develop good memories (which is consistent with cortisol experiments in animals). Students from less stimulating environments have worse language skills.

The question, of course, is, What can government do about any of this? The answer is that there are programs that do work to help young and stressed mothers establish healthier attachments. These programs usually involve having nurses or mature women make a series of home visits to give young mothers the sort of cajoling and practical wisdom that in other times would have been delivered by grandmothers or elders.

Not much to argue with here. It's a damn shame that psychology didn't begin to rethink the debilitating effects of an emotionally deprived childhood after Harry Harlow devastated baby monkeys by giving them a wire mother. That was 50 years ago, and yet it's taken us several decades to appreciate the seminal importance of growing up surrounded by warmth, tenderness and unconditional love. (Yet another reason to abhor the "mind as computer" metaphor. Computers don't have feelings, and cognitive science pretended that people didn't either.)

I'll only add that the best book on this subject that I've read remains Daniel Goleman's Emotional Intelligence. Some of the research feels a bit dated - the book came out in 1995 - but subsequent findings have only bolstered his argument. As Brooks notes:

One thing is clear: It's crazy to have educational policies that, in effect, chop up children's brains into the rational cortex, which the government ministers to in schools, and the emotional limbic system, which the government ignores. In nature there is no neat division. Emotional engagement is the essence of information processing and learning.