(Ronald Gross) Use your Whole Brain

Teaching and Learning Tips

From Ronald Gross
Use your Whole Brain
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The knack of effective learning is to know which of the brain quadrants you strongly favor - and to arrange the educational process so that you get to make maximum use those strengths.

Here are some specific ways in which this can be done - whether you are a learner or a teacher.

1. Approach your subject by using one of your favorite "styles."
For example, if you are studying statistics and find the material immensely off-putting because of the emphasis on abstractions and numbers, find alternative approaches that will "warm up" the subject. Read a vivid history of the leading figures who actually invented statistical methods, to see how passionate they were about the subject, and why.

They were trying to figure out why people died in the plague, how to beat the stock market, and how to maximize the wealth of a nation. Once the numbers take on flesh and blood, you will find mastery much more appealing.

2. Learn and teach "around the brain."
As a teacher, vary the ways you present material, so that in every class period, you appeal to at least three, hopefully all, of the quadrants. For example, in a literature class, complement your discussion of the language and imaginative elements of the work you are discussing, with more literal facts about the author's life and times.

3. Take a "Learning Walk-Around."
Say you're studying Psychology. Visit each quadrant of the brain and use its distinctive powers on the material. In the upper left, consider facts, theory, and data. In the lower left, focus on order, sequence, and procedures. In the upper right, let your fantasy and imaginative full rein, inspired by Einstein's dictum that "Imagination is more important than knowledge." In the lower right, express, share, and emphasize with how others could be impacted.

4. As a learner or teacher, use a wide repertoire of ways of understanding concepts, including the abstract, the procedural, the imaginative, and the emotional.
For example, Elizabeth Cohn, who trains nurses at Adelphi University, reaches her students through each of their ways of learning. In teaching them how the heart works, as a basis for reading EKG output, she provides printed materials and lectures on the principles. But she also engages them in a "Hokey Pokey" during which they do gymnastics to enact the flow of blood through the heart. And she provides them with a "Flip and See EKG" where they can physically manipulate read-outs instead of merely trying to memorize them.

There's a larger benefit to doing all this - beyond learning easier and better. You will be strengthening the comprehensive powers of your brain, in ALL the quadrants.

This is important for two reasons:

* Most important challenges we face in life REQUIRE the use of capabilities from all four ways of thinking.
In handling our financial affairs, for example, we cannot focus on just one approach such as a bookkeeping mind-set (lower-left), or on imaginative ways to create more wealth (upper-right), or on our feelings about getting and spending (lower right). We need to use ALL of these parts of our brain to best design our financial lives in terms of savings, projections, creativity, or resourcefulness.

* Our mental health depends on using our whole brain.
Over-emphasis on only one or two kinds of thinking makes for an unbalanced personality. We are all acquainted with such people: the Nerds who are trapped in their upper left quadrant, the Dreamers who are ensnarled in grandiose fantasies, the Co-Dependents whose feelings get them into trouble, the By-the-Bookers who just follow the rules. Each of these people has under-developed potential which could enrich their lives.

To address the challenges of our lives, and to develop our full potential, we need to use our whole brains.