Quotes About Learning

Hey, Geekoid!" yelled Duncan Dougal, "Why do you read so much? Don't you know how to watch TV?

One of the most remarkable properties of our brain is its capacity to change and adapt to our individual world. Neurons and neural networks actually make physical changes when stimulated; this is called neuroplasticity. The way they become stimulated is through our particular experiences. The brain changes in a 'use dependent' way.

As you learn anything, in fact, your brain is constantly checking current experience against stored templates—essentially memory—of previous, similar situations and sensations, asking "Is this new?" and "Is this something I need to attend to?

We tend to use the word stress in negative ways, but stress is merely a demand on one or more of our body's many physiological systems. Hunger, thirst, cold, working out, a promotion at work: All are stressors, and stress is an essential and positive part of normal development; it's a key element in learning, mastering new skills, and building resilience. The key factor in determining whether stress is positive or destructive is the pattern of stress

We need to allow children to try and fail. And when they do make the stupid, shortsighted decisions that come from inexperience, we need to let them suffer the results. At the same time we also need to provide balance by not setting policies that will magnify one mistake, like drug use or fighting, into a life-derailing catastrophe. Unfortunately, this is exactly what our current "zero tolerance" policies- —that expel children from school for just one rule violation—do.

The fact that the brain develops sequentially—and also so rapidly in the first years of life—explains why extremely young children are at such great risk of suffering lasting effects of trauma: their brains are still developing. The same miraculous plasticity that allows young brains to quickly learn love and language, unfortunately, also makes them highly susceptible to negative experiences as well.

To create an effective "memory" and increase strength, experience has to be patterned and repetitive.

Brain development is use-dependent: you use it or you lose it. If we don't give children time to learn how to be with others, to connect, to deal with conflict, and to negotiate complex social hierarchies, those areas of their brains will be underdeveloped.

One word the translators were able to figure out was that "Mum" meant "adult or caregiver," just as similar sounds mean mother in almost every known human language, since the "mm" sound is the first one babies learn to make while suckling.

El desarrollo del cerebro es uso-dependiente: o lo usas o lo pierdes.

how changes in our emotional state can affect how we learn.

Debemos dejar que lo niños tomen decisiones y se equivoquen, y cuando tomen las decisiones estúpidas y con poca visión de futuro que son fruto de la falta de experiencia, debemos dejar que sufran las consecuencias.

One of the most remarkable properties of our brain is its capacity to change and adapt to our individual world. Neurons and neural networks actually make physical changes when stimulated; this is called neuroplasticity. The way they become stimulated is through our particular experiences:

A key principle of neuroplasticity is specificity. In order to change any part of the brain, that specific part of the brain must be activated. If you want to learn to play the piano, you can't simply read about piano playing, or watch and listen to YouTube clips of other people playing piano.

Los niños reconstruyen los acontecimientos mediante juegos, dibujos y en sus interacciones diarias.

That's not necessarily bad—until it becomes so pleasing and engaging to the brain that we begin to prefer it to other less-stimulating, less-busy sensory input. An infant or toddler consumed by a screen is missing out on other critical forms of learning about the world. They should be exploring what things feel like, smell like, taste like. They should be making sense of their world using all their sensory tools.

Memory is the capacity to carry forward in time some element of an experience.

What this also means is that early experiences will necessarily have a far greater impact than later ones.

The good news is that the brain is malleable all through life. We can change. But we don't randomly change. To use your favorite word, we can intentionally change if we know what needs to be addressed. The key is to recognize the patterns.

a child with traumatic experiences will often have difficulty learning—and also be overreactive to the feedback and criticisms that come with struggling in school. This can lead to behavior problems. The behaviors are often misunderstood. So many of the things that people and systems do with good intentions actually cause additional pain for the families and children they're supposed to be serving.

patterned, repetitive experience in a safe environment can have an enormous impact on the brain

Yes. Unfortunately, our schools are typically not trauma-aware and tend to prohibit many of the regulatory activities we've mentioned: walking, rocking, fiddling with things while listening to a lesson, listening to music with your earbuds while doing homework. "Somatosensory regulation," such as the rhythmic activities we have discussed, actually opens up the cortex and makes the reasoning parts of the brain more accessible for learning.

read. We learn to read. By stimulating specific neural networks in patterned, repetitive ways, we change the brain. This is an experience-based transmission of a skill from one generation to the next; teaching a child changes their brain.

And with this changed brain, the child can grow up and teach what she has learned