Formal education
often does not address the social and emotional backgrounds of children and
their ability to learn, according to Ingrid Wickelgren, moderator at a recent New
York Academy of Sciences (NYAS) event titled Social and Emotional Learning: Preparing our Children to Excel. She
argued that parents and other caregivers send children to school, assuming that
the teacher will pour math, reading, and science into their tiny little
brains. Bam! Done! In reality, learning is infinitely more
complicated—some students are better-behaved, pay closer attention, complete homework
assignments, and others don’t. The level of learning, she pointed out, is due
to differences in executive functions such as attention, memory, planning skills, problem solving, and task
switching in the brain. While
being presented with new information
and skills, children should also be given better ways such as mindfulness and
other mental training to absorb and learn that information.
One of the event’s speakers,
Amishi Jha, Ph.D., associate professor of psychology at the University of Miami, focused on the concept of mindfulness, defining it as
“a mental mode characterized by attention to present moment experience without
conceptual elaboration or emotional reactivity.” At first, I wondered: Is she
suggesting that we don’t use our brains to think? Am I “mindful”? Jha said mindfulness
can train our brains to function more efficiently and calmly, without analyzing
or thinking about the past or future. Most importantly, it can improve
attention and other executive functions.
