Abstract
This chapter offers a critique of neuroeducation (education based on scientific brain research). The overarching question is: is the neuro strong enough to replace the century-long dominion of the psychological discourse within education? The answer is no: I show how psychologists are not made redundant, but, rather, remain in business as the primary advocates of the neuro as they morph into neuro-educators. From here, I demonstrate that neuroeducation cannot but become neuro-education, enjoining the pupils to see themselves, others and the world through the lens of the neuro-discourse. The more general observation is that the neuroturn is, as such, tributary to psychology and psychologization. Even at the most fundamental level (e.g., basic fMRI-research) neuroscience’s silent partner is psychology, and, hence, it inherits all psychology’s deadlocks.
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What might at first glance appear to be an overly simplified phrase from popular neuroscience—see Dick Swaab’s book (2014)—can in actual fact be attributed back to two Nobel prize winners: Eric Kandel said “you are your brain” and Francis Crick wrote “You are nothing but a bunch of neurons” (cited in S. Rose, 2011, p. 57).
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I use the word “neuroeducation” in its unhyphenated form to designate education based on brain research, whether in schools or in the realm of parental support, whilst “neuro-education” in its hyphenated form designates the more general practice of teaching the so-called layperson the theories and findings of neuroscience.
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See here for the use of that metaphor: http://muralconservancy.org/murals/metamorphosis-education-0
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Rousseau writes: “Remain in the place which nature assigns to you in the chain of being” (Rousseau, 1979, p. 83).
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Boris Demarest remarks: “The limits are assumed to be there, but we can never make determinate claims about them, such that Kant’s humanism is peculiar for its omission of commitment on the nature of humanity” (Demarest, 2016, p. 111).
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As aforesaid, this concerns education based on scientific brain research. For an overview of this burgeoning field see Elena Pasquinelli’s plea for a “good marriage” between education and the science of the mind-brain-behaviour, as well as her warning about some of the treacherous terrain facing research and practitioners in this endeavour (Pasquinelli, 2013). In this chapter, however, I contend that these aforementioned slippery slopes are not merely avoidable pitfalls or simple misunderstandings; rather, they are structurally unavoidable deadlocks that undermine the entire field of neuroeducation.
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So went the title of a seminar, http://research.vtc.vt.edu/videos/2014/mar/31/how-social-relationships-help-build-and-rehabilita/
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“The uses and abuses of biology: neuroscience, parenting and family policy in Britain” held in London, 28 March 2014, see http://blogs.kent.ac.uk/parentingculturestudies/research-themes/early-intervention/current-projects/
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For a general assessment of psychologisation see, for example, De Vos (2012b, 2013b) and Parker (2007), for how psychologisation operates specifically within education, see Burman (2012) and Ecclestone and Hayes (2009), and for how psychologisation has become central in schooling see (De Vos, 2012b; McLaughlin, 2010).
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Purdy and Morrison make a strong case against the “The Northern Ireland Revised Curriculum” and its claim for scientific support in neuroscience, condemning it for being “another unwitting step in a ‘curriculum spiral’” (Purdy & Morrison, 2009, p. 108).
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So if, for example, behaviourism and later Carl Rogers’ positive existentialism were important threads in education in the recent past (as one of the reviewers of an earlier draft of this chapter remarked), then the next move would be to look there for traces of psychologisation also, that is, for traces where pupils and students themselves were introduced theoretically into these psychological theories.
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See, for example, an educational brochure for 16-year-old pupils which contains a whole chapter on “the learning brain” dealing with the basics of cognitive psychology and its correlate neurology (Raeymaekers 2009).
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This sets the implementation of the psychological discourse apart from that of the medical discourse, for example. Even though the latter often goes together with medically educating patients, the backbone of medicalization does not rely on it: screening and vaccination programmes, for example, can adequately run entirely independently from this.
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However, one should also take into consideration, in this respect, my comment in the introduction to this book regarding how this artificiality might mirror our present-day condition.
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One should acknowledge, to the authors credit, that many others when dealing with the same task of interpreting similar data, often trade this tentative way of writing for a firm and unambiguous style.
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To be clear, I’m not endorsing a kind of naturalised difference between public and private. That distinction is always contingent, historically constructed and ideologically grounded. I come back to this issue in Chap. 7.
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Of course, I am not calling for a return to a rational knowledge and disciplinary model within education. My interest, again, is to look for the conditions of (im)possibility within, in this particular case, education.
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I will expand upon this in Chap. 7.
- 23.
Remember, in this respect, the brain-in-vat thought experiment discussed in the introduction of this book.
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De Vos, J. (2016). The Educated Brain: A Critique of Neuroeducation. In: The Metamorphoses of the Brain – Neurologisation and its Discontents. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-50557-6_2
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