🐴 Shakespeare at 8? A neuroscientist explains (#132)

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💡 THOUGHT

BEGINNER’S MIND

The neuroscience is clear: children's brains thrive on complexity when introduced properly. A 10-year-old devouring Shakespeare might surprise you - until you understand how learning actually works.

Honeycutt, a biomedical engineer and neuroscience expert turned homeschool mom, shares the techniques she used to hook her daughter on reading. Hear the full conversation about brain development and learning on the OpenEd podcast.

📊 TREND

THE GREAT REWIRING

As schools nationwide rush to become "brain-science informed," one neuroscientist took it a step further: she left her tenured professorship to apply brain science directly to her children's education.

Dr. Claire Honeycutt specialized in how the brain learns after stroke at ASU. But watching her daughter transform during COVID revealed something profound about natural learning patterns. Her daughter had been struggling at school - having emotional outbursts and resisting all academic work. "She didn't want to read, she didn't want to write, she didn't want to do anything," Honeycutt recalls. Within two weeks at home, the emotional outbursts disappeared. "I was healed by the presence of my children," she says. Now that same child voluntarily tackles complex books like The Once and Future King.

While schools work to integrate neuroscience principles through structured programs, a growing number of educators and parents are going deeper - reimagining education from the ground up based on how the brain actually develops and learns.

🔨 TOOL

THE BRAIN’S SWEET SPOT

Today’s book recommendations: Susan Wise Bauer's The Well-Trained Mind and Peter Gray's Free to Learn.

"They are literally polar opposite books.” notes Honeycutt, “[One] is like ‘all of the stuff’ and the other is like, ‘just let your kids just love life.’”

Bauer champions rigorous classical education - systematic study of great works, sequential skill-building, and structured development of analytical thinking. Gray advocates for natural learning through play, noting that children educate themselves when given freedom and rich environments.

Could these approaches activate different regions of the developing brain? We don't know yet. But Dr. Honeycutt, with her background in neuroscience, sees value in both:

“I marry those two. I'm a hodgepodge. I pick up the best of all the different approaches." 

That's what open education is all about.

That’s all for today!

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