Global Views
Dec 23rd, 2006 by willa
I have to shut down my processing on this R-B Learning thing in order to be here for my family over Christmas, but I just wanted to point to Throwing Marshmallows: Fixing Right-Brained Learners? though if you traced Cindy’s pingback you would find it anyway and probably most readers of this blog are making the whole homeschooljournal R-B learner circuit anyway 
But also, I’m trying to record the R-B conversation in this place so I can come back to it easily later. I am really learning from all this!
Cindy at Apple Stars took exception to the negative tone of the article I linked to and then Stephanie followed it up. They made some really interesting points which I totally agree with, since I’m not out to label my kids and “fix” them either. Probably clear from my other posts on this blog — though I do aim to give them some strategies to cope, but I would equally be trying to help any left-brained learners in my family acquire some right-brained modes of thinking.
NOW, incidentally (this is a side point, but it just occured to me): HOW much are these strategies a parent/homeschooler’s job to “teach” or explicitly guide? That’s the part I will be pondering over the holiday break. In some ways it seems to me (intuition here, nothing confirmed) that R-B learners like to do things for themselves, not have it laid out for them. So maybe there is a real reason for the homeschool mom of an R-B learner is to stand back and be aware of some of the ways that the RBL operates, not come in and “steal” the process away from them. That was one of the things that seemed implicit to me in Cindy’s post. I am typing fast and processing as I write, so I hope this makes a bit of sense! But anyway, it gives me something to think over. I always got a lot of satisfaction from searching for the clues myself, and they stuck better that way.
Second thing to ponder: I also was wondering why I didn’t pick up much on the negative tone in the article I linked to. When I look it over now I can see how strong the deficit terminology is throughout the article, but when I first linked to it I skipped right over those parts. Why is this? Here is my tentative theory:
I was reading this article along with a barrage of other articles, which I will link to at the bottom of this post. Some of the articles were very positive about R-B learning traits; others weren’t. But I was skimming through picking out the bits that were in line with some of the things I was thinking. The article I linked to made the point that left-brained learners could benefit from thinking in a right-brained manner, and that some strongly intellectually gifted-learners were very right-brained but in the school environment had developed strategies so that they could not be identified as particularly one or the other. Those were two things I had been tossing around in my own mind, so I grabbed those and missed all those “poor at” or “weak in…” points that seem quite obvious to me now.
The point I am trying to make in this rambling way — or the question I am thinking of:
Is it possible that Stephanie and Cindy, being more left-brained thinkers, picked up on the details and specific language of that article because of their detail-orientation — while *I*, being more right-brained and reading through this article in a very global, holistic “information harvesting mode”, completely missed the negative language and just grabbed the parts that coincided with the “big picture” I had in my mind?
I mention this because it would explain something that’s happened to me before — where I read something and get off on a trail of my own, and then one of my more left-brained friends reads the same thing and has a very negative impression of some detail that I hardly even was aware of. If this were the case, it would explain something that I’ve come up against before and it would give me some insight into something that has puzzled me in the past.
So enough processing for now — aren’t you glad?
Here are links to the other articles I was reading recently– most of them are PDFs, just so you know, and many of them will have that “how we can help children deal with a left-brained school system” tone that Cindy criticized so perceptively:
- Effective Techniques for Teaching Highly Gifted Visual-Spatial Learners — by Linda Silverman
- The Power of Images: Visual Spatial Learners — Silverman again
- A Picture is Worth a THousand Words Steve THornton
- The Power of Visual THinking — by Lesley Sword
- Teamwork: Helping Visual-Spatial Learners Blossom in a Auditory-Sequential Garden (I printed this one but must admit I barely skimmed it because I DON’T have to plant my VSLs in an A-S garden, thank goodness! I was just telling my daughter how as a child I used to hope to get sick because I’d rather be sick at home than physically healthy at school — Hallelujah, my kids don’t have to face that Pyrrhic dilemma ! )
“Is it possible that Stephanie and Cindy, being more left-brained thinkers, picked up on the details and specific language of that article because of their detail-orientation — while *I*, being more right-brained and reading through this article in a very global, holistic “information harvesting mode”, completely missed the negative language and just grabbed the parts that coincided with the “big picture” I had in my mind?”
I think you might have hit on something. I have had this experience lots of times. I frequently can get useful information out of articles or books that have a lot of stuff in them that I find objectionable. And it really annoys me when folks pick on some detail that I think is just something we can ignore (at least for the time being) in order to get the useful stuff.
This is particularly so in cases where they are missing the bigger argument an author is making to pick on some detail (a potentially contentious example, but it comes to mind, is that I really like the overall argument of Spong in the Sins of Scripture even if I think he is way off base with his claim that Paul is gay and influenced by internalized homophobia, an anachronistic conceptual framework on top of the lack of evidence). But in this case I think it’s the reverse — they point out an overarching argument that maybe we should be worried about and it makes it hard for them to see anything of value in there.
This is making me think you are probably right about my right brained tendencies. That and Steph mentioning the pictorial instructions (I can never see why folks have trouble following the instructions in IKEA packages).
But you’re right. We can’t change the world this week. And no one will die if we put this aside to have a really nice Christmas celebration with our families and friends. Hope yours is a good one.
Hey Willa,
I agree with you that I will also be tabling this until after the holidays. I’m glad you’re feeling comfortable to continue thinking outloud because there are definitely some points I want to make in lieu of your questions and ponderings.
Until later . . . enjoy your family, as I will mine :-)
-Cindy
>But in this case I think it’s the reverse — they point out an overarching argument that maybe we should be worried about and it makes it hard for them to see anything of value in there.>
Yes, I see what you are saying, JoVE. That’s what I was trying to say too — that Cindy and Stephanie picked up on the negativity issue that I was completely missing, at least on first reading. Sometimes a detail CAN be a quibble, but in this case the details added up to a whole slant and a real thing to be concerned about. Perhaps that’s where it’s helpful to dialogue, because you get other perspectives and can learn from them and adjust your own. THough I feel rather embarrassed that I missed that aspect, I also am happy that it brought out some things that wouldn’t have been brought out in the same way otherwise.
Cindy, yes, I would like to continue; I value your experienced perspective.
Have a good Christmas and winter holiday, all blog readers!
Willa and JoVE,
I have two thoughts about the point you raise about different readers picking up different things. I don’t think it’s a right-brained/left-brained thing . . . I think it’s a point-of-reference difference. Willa and JoVE, when you are reading these articles, you are looking for ideas for your children specifically, so you are “mining for gold” if you would . . . keeping the nuggets and throwing out the stones. I do that, too, when that is what my point-of-reference is. I did that with “Upside-Down Brilliance”, which I think is a great book in how she delineates the right-brained learner, but absolutely horrid in her testing perspective and slant.
My point-of-reference when I read this document was as an advocate for giving value to the right-brained learning style. So, I was reading it from that reference point, not as a miner of any good information. So, not only did I pick up on the fact that another author was pinpointing a right-brained learner as broken and needing improvement, but I also recognized the overall idea that it is useful for a right-brainer to be more left and vice versa as unsubstantiated. In fact, when I was reading this conversation outloud to my hubby, my very right-brained oldest son walked by and rather passionately insisted, “If you try to change a right-brained learner into a left-brained one, they will have psychological damage!” Well, I guess he has a strong opinion :-)
And JoVE, my oldest absolutely loved that speech by Sir Ken Robinson, as he happened to be sitting nearby when I started listening, and a quarter the way through, he was standing and listening . . . frankly, I think the English accent was the initial attraction, and then he zoned into the words and felt very validated . . . I loved it, too!
Anyway, some thoughts on this aspect for you . . .
-Cindy